The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood Paperback – April 27, 2004

... observed by a precocious child. That's one way to summarize this book, to empathize with the child narrator and to grasp that the adult writer's deepest intention was to portray his own grief and shame at the discovery that his parents, particularly his father, were Mortal: flawed and futile people who perhaps should never have married and who certainly had no common plan of parenting. The boy Hugo Hamilton remembers himself to have been is wounded, traumatized, for life. His memories strive to pin the rap for his traumata on his environment - Dublin in the 1950s - but the realization of his parents' discord can't be repressed forever. It's that realization that accompanies the narrator's 'maturation' as the book progresses. He needs to mature as a narrator, since he ages eight or ten years as a character in his memoirs, from age four or so to age twelve or fourteen. In fact, the chronology of the boy's aging is deliberately vague in the book, allowing the author to maintain his narrative pose of naivete until the final chapters. It's that naivete that keeps the whole book charming and graceful even while ugly, sordid, and foolish behaviours are reported.The boy's father is a crank. He's also an idealist. That combination isn't so rare, is it? He's an Irish nationalist, rabidly anti-English, and though his form of patriotism is quixotic it's not ignoble. But he's also a tyrannical father and an abusive husband. The boy will eventually find even nastier secrets in his father's closet. The mother is German, a physical and psychological victim of the Nazi years who comes to Ireland ostensibly to improve her English and who ironically marries a man who won't permit her or their children to speak, hear, read, or think English. We readers will eventually learn that she was raped by her boss in Germany, abused over a period of months, and that she is subjugated more than partnered by the Irish father of her children. She's a perfect case-study of womankind's 'post-traumatic stress disorder'. Author Hamilton only rather evasively acknowledges that much of his story must come directly from her diary; his memories, in other words, are practically hers.The boy is 'speckled' because he is half German and half Irish, and effectively lost in a 'world' that wants to be all English. His mother dresses him in an Irish cardigan sweater and Lederhosen. His father canes him for any 'trafficking' with the enemy English language or culture. The boys and some adults of his vicinity torment him for being German, taunting him as a Nazi when in fact he is, via his mother, a refugee from Nazidom. Very confusing for a boy of four, five, eight, nine years of age, and inevitably the confusion and ambiguity become integral parts of his identity.It's gorgeously written, this Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood. The quality of the writing is such that the sorrow of the subject might be overlooked. I have to express thanks to my ama-buddies in Canada, Australia, and Shanghai for dragging my equine attention to the lovely waters of the Irish seas. Once I knew of its existence, this book was an obvious "must-read" for me since I was also a 'speckled child'. My father was Swedish (and a crank) and my mother was German-American. My father never spoke about his motives or reasons for anything, but I think he hauled our little family out of Minnesota after the end of WW2 to escape his and my Germanization within my mother's extended family. Then, in the 1950s, when I was near finishing elementary school, we moved deep into the American South. I was very blond and I probably had an odd accent in English, and I remember being taunted as German (or even worse, as a Yankee). Hamilton writes of a distinction between "fist people" and "word people", and confesses that as a boy he wanted desperately to be one of the "fists". That's one of the many things in "The Speckled People" that I can corroborate.

I found The Speckled People after encountering a fascinating article by Hugo Hamilton on the "Loneliness of Being German". Similar to the article, the book immediately struck a chord with me. Those living within and without their own language will find a special connection to this book. Language as the identification of "home" and "country" and "language wars" are explored here in a rather exceptional way - through the voice and outlook of a growing child. Like a patchwork quilt the vignette chapters of the book come together for the reader to form an exquisitely drawn portrait. Hamilton's family is pictured against the backdrop of their Irish reality of poverty and want in the fifties and sixties. Complexities are accentuated by his dual identity as a child of an Irish nationalist father and a German mother who left Germany after the war.While The Speckled People is an intimately personal chronicle of his youth, Hamilton's story has significance far beyond the autobiography genre. There are advantages and challenges in using the language of a child. On the one hand, experiences can be conveyed in a direct and innocent way. Johannes (Hugo) has not yet learned to query all he observes: "When you're small you know nothing". He is a sensitive and perceptive child who intuits that there are more untold dramas in the family. "You can inherit a secret without even knowing what it is." On the other hand, it may be difficult to maintain the language as the boy's capacity to analyze and reflect becomes more pronounced with age. Hamilton succeeds admirably in keeping his style consistent even where he integrates numerous events from the wider world as they become relevant to the young boy. As you settle into his style, the narrative becomes deeply absorbing.The experiences of life under Nazi rule as part of an anti-Nazi family, continue to haunt his mother. Her painful memories are conveyed to the son in small doses, like selected scenes from a black and white movie in which she had a part. Nonetheless, she is homesick for her native country and all things German. Books, souvenirs and toys arrive regularly resulting in outbursts of happy laughter. Johannes records his mother's mood swings expressed through either laughter or primarily mental withdrawal and silence.His father feels more Irish than anybody around them. He insists on preserving Irish culture and on "freeing" the Irish people from British influences. His children become "his weapon" against the enemy. He forbids the family to speak English. The children tend to "live" in German as their mother has difficulties speaking Irish. The Irish language has to be protected even if it means losing business. This can mean that cheques are not accepted from people who cannot spell Ó hUrmoltaigh - Hamilton in Irish. The language is your home, "your country is your language", he insists - it identifies who you are. The pressure on the children to speak German and Irish at home sets them apart from people in Dublin at the time. There, English was the preferred language. The children suffer from this enforced isolation. The neighbourhood bullies, responding to their otherness and German identity call them "Nazi", "Hitler" or "Eichmann". They attack them whenever the opportunity arises. While Johannes repeats to himself and to his mother "I am not a Nazi", he does not defend himself against the assaults. One of the rules of the house is to adopt a form of pacifist resistance, the "silent negative " and not to become part of the "fist people". As Johannes grows up, he understandably rebels increasingly against these strictures. In the end, he discovers his own way out of all the identify confusion, his anger and pain.The Speckled People is a memoir like no other. Any comparison with other Irish memoirs would seem inappropriate to me. While Hamilton chronicles his childhood and growing up, themes and issues beyond the personal play a fundamental role. In particular his exploration of the complexities of "language" as "home" and "country" gives this book added richness and depth. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa Canada]

very human.