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.