The last three chapters were really compelling and wonderful. I struggled through the rest.

Fantastic book written in such an interesting style. Maybe it's a common thing but I've never read a book written from a child's perspective before, not an adult book anyway, and so convincingly at that. It was interesting to read about Ireland after the separation from Britain and about Germany after WWII. A really good read.

If Goodreads had a half star rating, I'd put this closer to 3.5 than a four. This is, at times, a beautiful recreation of Hugo's experiences as a boy living with his German mother and an Irish, nationalistic, father set amongst the backdrop of 1950's/60's Ireland. Though both parents clearly have different parenting styles, they are both united by nostalgia and a longing for a return to the good old days. The father yearns for an Ireland he imagines so much that he forces his children to only speak in Irish. The mother speaks about her own desire for Germany to return to where it was before the Nazi's occupation. It is this thematic strand that is captured pretty well.

Unfortunately, the scattered nature of the writing style is a bit of a downer. In every chapter I found, there was a tendency to go from subject to subject. For example, there are two chapters one after the other that discuss his father's friend, school experiences and relatives. I would have preferred a less is more approach here.

‘When you’re small you can inherit a secret without knowing what it is.’

In ‘The Speckled People’, Hugo Hamilton writes, from a child’s perspective, of his Irish childhood. He writes of growing up in a home where the languages spoken were the Irish of his nationalist father and the German of his mother. English was forbidden by his father, who was so obsessed with trying to hold onto his linguistic and cultural heritage that he would not do business with anyone who could not pronounce his Irish name (Ó hUrmoltaigh) correctly.

‘Everybody else was in the wrong country and couldn’t rescue us.’

Hamilton and his siblings grew up in Dublin during the 1950s and 1960s. His mother, Irmgard Kaiser, left Germany after World War II to go on a pilgrimage to Ireland. She stayed in Ireland, and married Jack Hamilton (who had renamed himself Sean Ó hUrmoltaigh). Jack Hamilton dedicated his life to the anti-British, nationalist cause and particularly to the rehabilitation of the Irish language. His father, who had served and died in the British Navy, was largely (but not entirely) removed from the family record.

The children who mostly dominate the story are Franz, Johannes and Maria, although other siblings are mentioned. It is Johannes who tells this story, and while he signals a future name change, the actual change is not discussed.

‘When I grow up I'll run away from my story, too. I have things I want to forget, so I'll change my name and never come back. ‘

Writing an account from a child’s perspective must be challenging for any adult: reading an account written from a child’s perspective has advantages and disadvantages. A child can recount what is seen, observed and experienced without necessarily understanding and interpreting the context. A child’s account is immediate, whereas distance and age often provide interpretational filters. So, while I enjoyed reading Hugo’s account of his childhood, I wanted at times to read his adult interpretation of events. But, it’s a memoir rather than a biography and the child Hugo’s perspective of the issues of identity and belonging, and the baggage of culture and language are worth reading and thinking about.

‘The Speckled People’ is a careful return to a complex childhood full of challenges and secrets, overshadowed by present and past personal, national and international conflict. And of all the images in this book, the ones that come first to mind involve the dog that barks at the waves. For me it’s a powerful image.

‘Maybe your country is only a place that you make up in your own mind.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

For a good portion of this memoir I was prepared to give it 2 or 3 stars. I believe I felt this way because for the most part, the book is written in a childish tone from a child's point of view and while at times I will admit I appreciated that, I believe it also elicited impatience. While I valued the unique story being told, I still struggled to see the bigger picture of where the overall piece was working toward. For me, it wasn't until the end that I decided to reward this book with a 4. This is for many reasons but mainly because I think the overall message and goal of this memoir comes off so strong that it can't and should not be ignored. Everything does come full circle. I also feel like I really learned a lot from Hamilton's personal struggles as well as more about the struggles of various people with the historical context of the World Wars still being largely relevant. In the beginning, I was fairly certain I would not be recommending this book to many however, now, I am happy to say that that opinion has changed.

"We are the German-Irish story. We are the English-Irish story, too. My father has one soft foot and one hard foot, one good ear and one bad ear, and we have one Irish foot and one German foot and a right arm in English. We are the brack children. Brack, homemade Irish bread with German raisins. We are the brack people and we don't have just one language and one history. We sleep in German and we dream in Irish. We laugh in Irish and we cry in German. We are silent in German and we speak in English. We are the speckled people." Hugo Hamilton

This was a fabulous read. Especially the last few chapters.
So much about identity and language and forcefulness.

At first I loved this book. I loved his writing style. By the end of it, like the last 50 pages or so, I tired of the child-voice he uses. I knew he was a teenager, why didn't he talk like one? And the end moved so fast, and so much happened, and it seemed kind of thrown together. I still really enjoyed it.

Il est toujours délicat de donner son avis et d'analyser la vie de quelqu'un. Dans ce premier tome de ses romans autobiographiques, Hugo Hamilton raconte son enfance tourmentée entre ses expériences contradictoires et les violences d'un père aimant. Ce ne sont pas tant ses deux cultures qui l'ont divisé mais plutôt son environnement. Un jour, il voulait être allemand et prouver à tous qu'il pouvait être fort et cruel. Le lendemain, il voulait être un pur Irlandais, qui parlait en disant le contraire.

Le passé de chacun de ses parents n'y est pas pour rien. Il raconte l'histoire de sa mère en la mêlant à sa vie d'enfant, en plaçant des éléments postérieurs avant d'autres. Le tout reste cohérent. Parfois, plus loin entre les pages, il revient sur certains moments déjà racontés, ne les modifie pas mais les complète et les rend encore plus concrets. Comme celle-ci le faisait, il narre le passé, cache certains détails, en révèle d'autres, dit la dure vérité, celle difficile à révéler par écrit. Et quelle prouesse d'écriture, quel style ! Parfois, l'innocence de l'enfance semble revenir et l'impression de lire les révélations d'un enfant se fait ressentir. La vérité qu'il en ressort n'en est que plus grande.

Nous avons en vis-à-vis de sa propre histoire, l'histoire de l'Allemagne de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et celle de sa reconstruction, et celle de l'Irlande d'entre-deux guerres et d'après également. Il semble brasser différentes époques pour montrer leurs similitudes et leurs différences. Et alors que l’Allemagne apparait comme un peuple boudé mais prospère, l’Irlande apparait comme un pays boudeur et derrière les autres, qui peine à sortir la tête de l’eau. La vie de son père aura été un véritable combat. Il aura tenté à mainte reprise, de sauver sa famille de la dérive comme il va de soi à la première lecture, mais surtout, de sauver l’Irlande de l’Empire Britannique et de son emprise. Il éduque ses enfants dans ce sens, quitte à ceux-ci en souffre, « pour le bien de l’Irlande ». Cet état d’esprit, assez minoritaire alors en République d’Irlande, finira par peser sur les épaules de toute la famille. Moins il y a de monde, plus le poids de ce que nous tentons de porter fièrement est lourd. Cependant, son père ne perdra jamais espoir. A plusieurs reprises, cette phrase, approximativement retranscrite ici, revient comme un dicton, voire un mantra : il faut avancer, créer et inventer toutes ces choses qui ne sont pas encore finies en Irlande. Peut-être qu’à l’époque, une reconversion du pays vers ses origines semblait encore possible à ceux qui y croyaient. Le mot de « dé-anglicisation » n'appariait qu’une fois dans le roman, mais m’a marquée, « Il était tant que l’Irlande se tienne sur ses deux pieds » ; « L’Irlande n’existait que dans les chansons, loin, très loin dans le passé ou dans l’avenir ». Son père accorde à sa langue natale, autant d’importance qu’à l’air qu’il respire.

Sa mère, au contraire, semble plus réservée. Elle ne semble pas se battre pour répartir le poids de son combat sur plusieurs épaules. Elle porte toute seule le poids de son passé, et pour ne pas finir écrasée par ses souvenirs, elle raconte son histoire à ses enfants. Les choses trop imposantes, elle préfère les écrire pour qu’à leur tour, ses enfants ne soient pas écrasés. Comme elle disait, « ça ne servait à rien de vouloir être innocent. Ma mère dit qu’on ne peut être innocent qu’en acceptant la culpabilité. On ne peut grandir qu’en acceptant la honte. »