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Blame Hitler
Motoring with his family to the south-west of France, Thomas Somers is struck with a profoundly unsettling by the end of the holiday he will be older than his father was when he died.
Thomas hates his job. He's plagued with mysterious pains in his abdomen. He drinks too much. Distances open up between him and his wife, even his children. And now this sudden disturbing realization. From boyhood he was driven to do better than his dad - above all as a rival for his mother's love, a rivalry riven with guilt. But he recognizes his father was a better man than he. So how can he, how dare he, win the last round of all and live longer?
Force-fed by French friends, Thomas finds his nights are filled with dream and memory of the man who became and remained a stranger on the day he joined up and disappeared for three years. Blame Hitler! Obsessed with Wellington (the father figure who never lets you down), Thomas leaves his family and arrives, in turmoil, on one of Wellington's battlefields in northern Spain. Here at last he comes to terms with his father's crippling past.
Blame Hitler remembers the men who fought in World War Two, who survived and carried the burden of intolerable traumas for the rest of their lives. It is a comic, tragic, tender novel in which the continuities and discontinuities of domestic life are entwined with history at the sharp end.
Thomas hates his job. He's plagued with mysterious pains in his abdomen. He drinks too much. Distances open up between him and his wife, even his children. And now this sudden disturbing realization. From boyhood he was driven to do better than his dad - above all as a rival for his mother's love, a rivalry riven with guilt. But he recognizes his father was a better man than he. So how can he, how dare he, win the last round of all and live longer?
Force-fed by French friends, Thomas finds his nights are filled with dream and memory of the man who became and remained a stranger on the day he joined up and disappeared for three years. Blame Hitler! Obsessed with Wellington (the father figure who never lets you down), Thomas leaves his family and arrives, in turmoil, on one of Wellington's battlefields in northern Spain. Here at last he comes to terms with his father's crippling past.
Blame Hitler remembers the men who fought in World War Two, who survived and carried the burden of intolerable traumas for the rest of their lives. It is a comic, tragic, tender novel in which the continuities and discontinuities of domestic life are entwined with history at the sharp end.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
About the author
Julian Rathbone
68 books24 followersJulian Christopher Rathbone was born in 1935 in Blackheath, southeast London. His great-uncle was the actor and great Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone, although they never met.
The prolific author Julian Rathbone was a writer of crime stories, mysteries and thrillers who also turned his hand to the historical novel, science fiction and even horror — and much of his writing had strong political and social dimensions.
He was difficult to pigeonhole because his scope was so broad. Arguably, his experiment with different genres and thus his refusal to be typecast cost him a wider audience than he enjoyed. Just as his subject matter changed markedly over the years, so too did his readers and his publishers.
Among his more than 40 books two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Both were historical novels: first King Fisher Lives, a taut adventure revolving around a guru figure, in 1976, and, secondly, Joseph, set during the Peninsular War and written in an 18th-century prose style, in 1979. But Rathbone never quite made it into the wider public consciousness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_R...
The prolific author Julian Rathbone was a writer of crime stories, mysteries and thrillers who also turned his hand to the historical novel, science fiction and even horror — and much of his writing had strong political and social dimensions.
He was difficult to pigeonhole because his scope was so broad. Arguably, his experiment with different genres and thus his refusal to be typecast cost him a wider audience than he enjoyed. Just as his subject matter changed markedly over the years, so too did his readers and his publishers.
Among his more than 40 books two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Both were historical novels: first King Fisher Lives, a taut adventure revolving around a guru figure, in 1976, and, secondly, Joseph, set during the Peninsular War and written in an 18th-century prose style, in 1979. But Rathbone never quite made it into the wider public consciousness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_R...
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