- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Fourth Estate (6 Feb 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007192177
- ISBN-13: 978-0007192175
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.4 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,374,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Praise for ‘The Speckled People’:
‘Hamilton’s first masterpiece. To read “The Speckled People” is to remember why great writing matters. A book for our times, and probably of all time.’ Joseph O’Connor
‘A wonderful book…thoughtful and compelling, smart and original, beautifully written…Hamilton has done an awful lot more with his strange and oddly beautiful childhood than just write it down.’ Nick Hornby, Sunday Times
‘This is the most gripping book I've read in ages. And it’s beautifully written: what could have been safe memories are made new-lived and real in this fascinating, disturbing and often very funny memoir.’ Roddy Doyle
‘An extraordinary achievement…a wonderful, subtle, problematic and humane book. It is about Ireland as well as about a particular family, but it is also about alternatives and complexities anywhere. It is about the speckled nature of the world, which, for all its violence, remains fresh to its perceivers.’ George Szirtes, Irish Times
‘This story about a battle over language and defeat “in the language wars” is also a victory for eloquent writing, crafty and cunning in its apparent simplicity.’ Hermione Lee, Guardian
Sunday Tribune
'It must establish Hugo as a major writer of the very first order'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
`Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character.'
30 Nov 2011
Format:Hardcover
'The Sailor in the Wardrobe' is Hugo Hamilton's second memoir, and is focussed on his transition from his restricted boyhood in Dublin to independent adulthood. The sailor referred to in the title is Hugo's paternal grandfather, John Hamilton, who died while serving in the Royal Navy. A photograph of John Hamilton in his uniform is kept in the back of his father's wardrobe: in his father's eyes any form of service for the British is viewed with anger and shame.
`..children forget the real damage that was done and start repairing things with their imagination.'
As Hugo makes the transition from childhood to adulthood, he continues to describe (as he did in `The Speckled People') and increasingly to question the experience of belonging and of not belonging. He works at the harbour at a local fishery where his boss Dan Hurley is engaged in a religious war with another fisherman. Hugo's best friend, Packer, ignores him for a time without any explanation, and Hugo continually challenges his father's rules.
`No matter how much I try to be the opposite, I will still end up like my father. It's how evolution works, with every son slipping into his father's shoes, no matter how different your clothes are or how long your hair is or how different the music is you're listening to.'
The conflicts between father and son are very much a part of Hugo's journey to adulthood. In one scene, after telling his father that he desires ignorance rather than knowledge, Hugo has a bowl of stewed apple thrown at him. And towards the end, I really liked reading about Jack Hamilton's abandoning his own rules while discovering how to link an initially incompatible mechanism between two power stations: one made in Germany and the other in England. Jack Hamilton started speaking English, with a Cork accent.
When one of his German cousins, Stefan, arrives in Ireland and then goes missing in Connemara, the entire family is puzzled. It seems that Hugo is not the only member of his generation seeking to redefine his identity.
Hugo Hamilton's recounting of these memories and events is interesting and insightful and while `The Sailor in the Wardrobe' echoes `The Speckled People', Hugo is becoming self-aware enough to seek his own, different place in the world. There's a hope that he can move beyond the past, the weight of history, into a future where history is an aspect rather than an anchor.
I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as `The Speckled People'. Partly it's because I kept forgetting to differentiate between Hugo's impressions as a child from his gradual shift from adolescence to adulthood. I'd like to read a third instalment, but not just yet.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
`..children forget the real damage that was done and start repairing things with their imagination.'
As Hugo makes the transition from childhood to adulthood, he continues to describe (as he did in `The Speckled People') and increasingly to question the experience of belonging and of not belonging. He works at the harbour at a local fishery where his boss Dan Hurley is engaged in a religious war with another fisherman. Hugo's best friend, Packer, ignores him for a time without any explanation, and Hugo continually challenges his father's rules.
`No matter how much I try to be the opposite, I will still end up like my father. It's how evolution works, with every son slipping into his father's shoes, no matter how different your clothes are or how long your hair is or how different the music is you're listening to.'
The conflicts between father and son are very much a part of Hugo's journey to adulthood. In one scene, after telling his father that he desires ignorance rather than knowledge, Hugo has a bowl of stewed apple thrown at him. And towards the end, I really liked reading about Jack Hamilton's abandoning his own rules while discovering how to link an initially incompatible mechanism between two power stations: one made in Germany and the other in England. Jack Hamilton started speaking English, with a Cork accent.
When one of his German cousins, Stefan, arrives in Ireland and then goes missing in Connemara, the entire family is puzzled. It seems that Hugo is not the only member of his generation seeking to redefine his identity.
Hugo Hamilton's recounting of these memories and events is interesting and insightful and while `The Sailor in the Wardrobe' echoes `The Speckled People', Hugo is becoming self-aware enough to seek his own, different place in the world. There's a hope that he can move beyond the past, the weight of history, into a future where history is an aspect rather than an anchor.
I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as `The Speckled People'. Partly it's because I kept forgetting to differentiate between Hugo's impressions as a child from his gradual shift from adolescence to adulthood. I'd like to read a third instalment, but not just yet.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Another book set in Ireland Post WW2 about estrangement in growing up beset by anti-strangers (nationalistic) views. An interesting plot. A bit drab in the telling. Ironic that the cover, its fleshly, companionable intensity, is what is needed in the text. Is the toughest subject that of belonging/alienation? This book doesn't quite make it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
`Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character.'
30 Nov 2011
Format:Hardcover
'The Sailor in the Wardrobe' is Hugo Hamilton's second memoir, and is focussed on his transition from his restricted boyhood in Dublin to independent adulthood. The sailor referred to in the title is Hugo's paternal grandfather, John Hamilton, who died while serving in the Royal Navy. A photograph of John Hamilton in his uniform is kept in the back of his father's wardrobe: in his father's eyes any form of service for the British is viewed with anger and shame.
`..children forget the real damage that was done and start repairing things with their imagination.'
As Hugo makes the transition from childhood to adulthood, he continues to describe (as he did in `The Speckled People') and increasingly to question the experience of belonging and of not belonging. He works at the harbour at a local fishery where his boss Dan Hurley is engaged in a religious war with another fisherman. Hugo's best friend, Packer, ignores him for a time without any explanation, and Hugo continually challenges his father's rules.
`No matter how much I try to be the opposite, I will still end up like my father. It's how evolution works, with every son slipping into his father's shoes, no matter how different your clothes are or how long your hair is or how different the music is you're listening to.'
The conflicts between father and son are very much a part of Hugo's journey to adulthood. In one scene, after telling his father that he desires ignorance rather than knowledge, Hugo has a bowl of stewed apple thrown at him. And towards the end, I really liked reading about Jack Hamilton's abandoning his own rules while discovering how to link an initially incompatible mechanism between two power stations: one made in Germany and the other in England. Jack Hamilton started speaking English, with a Cork accent.
When one of his German cousins, Stefan, arrives in Ireland and then goes missing in Connemara, the entire family is puzzled. It seems that Hugo is not the only member of his generation seeking to redefine his identity.
Hugo Hamilton's recounting of these memories and events is interesting and insightful and while `The Sailor in the Wardrobe' echoes `The Speckled People', Hugo is becoming self-aware enough to seek his own, different place in the world. There's a hope that he can move beyond the past, the weight of history, into a future where history is an aspect rather than an anchor.
I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as `The Speckled People'. Partly it's because I kept forgetting to differentiate between Hugo's impressions as a child from his gradual shift from adolescence to adulthood. I'd like to read a third instalment, but not just yet.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
`..children forget the real damage that was done and start repairing things with their imagination.'
As Hugo makes the transition from childhood to adulthood, he continues to describe (as he did in `The Speckled People') and increasingly to question the experience of belonging and of not belonging. He works at the harbour at a local fishery where his boss Dan Hurley is engaged in a religious war with another fisherman. Hugo's best friend, Packer, ignores him for a time without any explanation, and Hugo continually challenges his father's rules.
`No matter how much I try to be the opposite, I will still end up like my father. It's how evolution works, with every son slipping into his father's shoes, no matter how different your clothes are or how long your hair is or how different the music is you're listening to.'
The conflicts between father and son are very much a part of Hugo's journey to adulthood. In one scene, after telling his father that he desires ignorance rather than knowledge, Hugo has a bowl of stewed apple thrown at him. And towards the end, I really liked reading about Jack Hamilton's abandoning his own rules while discovering how to link an initially incompatible mechanism between two power stations: one made in Germany and the other in England. Jack Hamilton started speaking English, with a Cork accent.
When one of his German cousins, Stefan, arrives in Ireland and then goes missing in Connemara, the entire family is puzzled. It seems that Hugo is not the only member of his generation seeking to redefine his identity.
Hugo Hamilton's recounting of these memories and events is interesting and insightful and while `The Sailor in the Wardrobe' echoes `The Speckled People', Hugo is becoming self-aware enough to seek his own, different place in the world. There's a hope that he can move beyond the past, the weight of history, into a future where history is an aspect rather than an anchor.
I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as `The Speckled People'. Partly it's because I kept forgetting to differentiate between Hugo's impressions as a child from his gradual shift from adolescence to adulthood. I'd like to read a third instalment, but not just yet.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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