Loved this book, does not read like a memoir, more like a fictional novel. The challenges that a multi-cultural family faces is always poignant, but especially so shortly after a World War. Hugo Hamilton had me drawn in from the very first lines, and never did I waver in my desire to keep reading.

As a connoisseur of Memoirs (especially Irish and German post WWII ones) I enjoyed this book for the content. It provided a very interesting insight into a trilingual family struggling with cultural identity from the perspective of a child. However, I am giving it a lower rating because I personally had a lot of issue with the writing style. At times the content was exceptionally confusing and I had a hard time finishing the book for this reason alone.

Sept . 2014 RS book group

Finally finished, got a copy from the Sacramento Library. Good read, worth reading.

When you’re small you can inherit a secret without even knowing what it is. You can be trapped in the same film as your mother, because certain things are passed on to you that you’re not even aware of...unspoken things...that you can’t understand until later when you grow up.

Hugo and his siblings grow up in an Irish-German household, where the English language is forbidden. They are a speckled people, not beloning to the country of their birth nor that of their German mother. Their peers call them "Nazis" and "Eichmann", but their father refuses to have them speak English or do anything to help them belong. He is an insecure and controlling man, disappointed by the route his country took after independence. This book was a painfully beautiful description of the confusion felt by children by the conflicting and contradictory world adults create. I found many passages within this book to be very moving.

...I’m not afraid any more of being German or Irish, or anywhere in between. Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind.

Muy bonito el libro, tanto la versión original como la traducida. El autor crea imágenes muy bellas y nos da una visión de una infancia que está marcada por las luchas de poder entre las tres lenguas con las que tiene que convivir.

This book was so touching, it gave me an interesting, sad and happy insight into the authors life.. It felt real & untouched like it was all happening today. I liked that it was very serious & had a lot of worldly issues but written in such a way that it felt easy to hear them all. I loved it

Well-written and moving account of childhood and national identity