The speckled people

If Goodreads had a half star rating, I'd put this closer to 3.5 than a four. This is, at times, a beautiful recreation of Hugo's experiences as a boy living with his German mother and an Irish, nationalistic, father set amongst the backdrop of 1950's/60's Ireland. Though both parents clearly have different parenting styles, they are both united by nostalgia and a longing for a return to the good old days. The father yearns for an Ireland he imagines so much that he forces his children to only speak in Irish. The mother speaks about her own desire for Germany to return to where it was before the Nazi's occupation. It is this thematic strand that is captured pretty well.

Unfortunately, the scattered nature of the writing style is a bit of a downer. In every chapter I found, there was a tendency to go from subject to subject. For example, there are two chapters one after the other that discuss his father's friend, school experiences and relatives. I would have preferred a less is more approach here.