I have to declare an interest in this book. My father was brought up in 1930s Dublin, the eldest son of driven and emotionally distant German parents. His name—slightly altered from the original by my grandfather to sound less obviously German—reflected an uncertain status. My father never wanted to be German, but was certainly not Irish either.
His problems with identity, however, were nothing compared to those endured by Hugo Hamilton 25 years later—if the story of his childhood in The Speckled People is to be believed. (There is no reason not to believe it, but you just never know with autobiography these days.)
Hamilton’s father is portrayed as a fanatical nationalist and propagator of the Irish language; his mother Irmgard is German, with an impeccable anti-Nazi background. She arrived in Ireland after the war, fleeing a personal horror as well as a national catastrophe.
Hugo grows up in the south Dublin district of Dun Laoghaire. His childhood is dominated by the extraordinary lengths to which his father Jack (or Sean as he insists) goes to enforce his idea of Irishness on his children, and the violence he uses to that end. Hugo’s brother Franz has his nose broken for speaking English; the father burns the poppies given to the children by a neighbour on Armistice Day; if an English song comes on the radio it is instantly switched off. ‘In our house it’s dangerous to sing a song or say what’s inside your head. You have to be careful or else my father will get up and switch you off like the radio.’
Hamilton’s father changes his surname too. In his job and his personal life he refuses to deal with anyone who cannot or will not use the Irish version of Hamilton, the morphologically challenging O’hUrmoltaigh. The town of Mullingar remains without electricity for weeks because he sends back all their letters addressed to ‘John Hamilton’ at the Electricity Supply Board where he works. As part of his personal and uncompromising language war, he bombards the Dublin Corporation with letters insisting they change the names of the streets into Irish (in this, at least, he was successful).
But while English is not tolerated in the O’hUrmoltaigh household, German is welcomed. The father is a fluent speaker and enthusiast for German culture, as is his brother—the all-but-silent Jesuit priest, Onkel Ted. So Hugo and his steadily increasing band of siblings are doubly ostracised outside