 Word On Books
with Jeremy Fenton
The Speckled People
By Hugo Hamilton
Published by Fourth Estate
 It has taken novelist Hugo Hamilton some 50-odd years to write his memoir of young life in a family that consisted of incongruously coupled parents: his father was a fiercely nationalistic Irishman, while his mother was a German emigrant tarred with a Nazi past.
The author has always brought elements of his ‘dual-identity’ to his works, through such works as Surrogate City, The Last Shot and The Love Test (not to forget his short story ‘Nazi Christmas’), but not until now has he sought to explain this unusual literary bent.
As an indication of just how confounding Hamilton’s childhood must have been, you have to first understand that his father tried to shield all influence of the British from his children. This meant speaking Irish at home. Unfortunately his mother only spoke German, and, to further complicate things, Hugo himself wanted to speak English.
The result was a little boy who spoke Irish at home, German to his mother (but quietly) and English out in the world (and well away from his father).
Then there are the other matters of being dressed like a good little German who the other children imaginatively taunted with the cry of ‘Nazi’, or, of the decoration for valour (literally hidden away in the bottom of a closet) his father had earned in the British Navy.
While The Speckled People is unusual in many regards, it is in Hamilton’s description of his parents, especially his father, that he really breaks the mould: here is a careful presentation of that rare entity, a ‘good’ Irish Dad. Not that he isn’t flawed through his occasional violence, and one-eyed view of the world, but he’s no drunken tyrant or ineffectual wretch.
The writing itself is not flashy, nor is it overly inventive; actually it’s quite plain in places. What it does do, though, is serve the story and characters to best effect. By the book’s end, readers have spent a portion of their own life in Hamilton’s particular German-Irish skin, as well as having a clear understanding that this is a book about belonging; and how difficult it can be to do so when you are torn between countries, histories, cultures and people.
However, most endearing of all in this wonderfully readable book is that it actually has a happy – if ambiguous – ending.
The Speckled People is recommended reading to be added to the small, but ever-growing, section of world literature that is the redoubtable Irish memoir.
jeremy@wordonbooks.com
www.wordonbooks.com
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