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A review by asteroidbuckle
The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer
2.0
This is the strangest book, fiction or nonfiction, that I have read in a long time.
Never having read a Norman Mailer book before, I had no idea what to expect. The blurb on the dust jacket sounded promising: a story about Adolf Hitler as a child, with portraits of his parents and siblings, as told by a mysterious SS officer. As a huge fan of historical fiction with a special interest in Nazi/WWII fiction, I couldn't pass this up.
However, I'm ambivalent about it. It wasn't bad, but I can't bring myself to say it was good, either. The best thing I can say about it is that it was weird enough for me to see it through to the end.
This book is many things rolled into one: a novel, an essay on the shortcomings of organized religion, an exploration of the age-old question of Good vs. Evil, and an in-depth look at how sex is at once a great and terrible thing, driving people to push the limits of morality in pursuit of carnal pleasure.
The narrator, as it turns out, is not an SS man, but a demon, a minor devil who once possessed the SS man and who now is breaking his code of silence to tell the story of how he helped shape and influence Adolf Hitler well into adulthood.
The book is told from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, since the point-of-view of several characters are covered in the book, many times within the same section. The narrative focuses mainly on Adolf's immediate family: Alois, his father; Klara, his mother; and his siblings Alois Junior, Angela, and Edmund. Their thoughts and motivations as well as how they interacted with Adolf while he was growing up (at times influenced by the demon) play major role in shaping young Adi, as Adolf was called, into the ego-centric, blood-obsessed, ambitious man we're familiar with.
The creativity with which Mailer uses these events of Adi's childhood is impressive, though at times it feels as if the story lacks focus. The story flits from one character to the next, oftentimes rapidly, at times focusing too much on sex (Alois' womanizing, Alois Junior's cruel and selfish affair with an old beekeeper, Adolf's masturbation style), other times retreating into a sermon on the absurdities of religion (Mailer even goes so far as to have the demon refer to God as the Dummkopf, which roughly translated, apparently means "dumbass").
The twist happens right at the beginning: Adolf is a child of incest. His parents are father and daughter, though neither is quite willing to let themselves admit it. As circumstances have it, they marry, and much of the rest of the book sets out to describe how this knowledge and its consequences influences both Klara (who thinks her children keep dying because of it) and Alois (whose powerful ego must constantly find ways to smooth over the rough spots caused by guilt).
The book ends when Adolf is 18 or 19, and we begin to really see the beginnings of the monstrous man he is to become.
Like I said, a strange book. It feels like Mailer tried to make it too many things and as a result, none of them really worked. I must say I wasn't sorry to reach the end.
Never having read a Norman Mailer book before, I had no idea what to expect. The blurb on the dust jacket sounded promising: a story about Adolf Hitler as a child, with portraits of his parents and siblings, as told by a mysterious SS officer. As a huge fan of historical fiction with a special interest in Nazi/WWII fiction, I couldn't pass this up.
However, I'm ambivalent about it. It wasn't bad, but I can't bring myself to say it was good, either. The best thing I can say about it is that it was weird enough for me to see it through to the end.
This book is many things rolled into one: a novel, an essay on the shortcomings of organized religion, an exploration of the age-old question of Good vs. Evil, and an in-depth look at how sex is at once a great and terrible thing, driving people to push the limits of morality in pursuit of carnal pleasure.
The narrator, as it turns out, is not an SS man, but a demon, a minor devil who once possessed the SS man and who now is breaking his code of silence to tell the story of how he helped shape and influence Adolf Hitler well into adulthood.
The book is told from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, since the point-of-view of several characters are covered in the book, many times within the same section. The narrative focuses mainly on Adolf's immediate family: Alois, his father; Klara, his mother; and his siblings Alois Junior, Angela, and Edmund. Their thoughts and motivations as well as how they interacted with Adolf while he was growing up (at times influenced by the demon) play major role in shaping young Adi, as Adolf was called, into the ego-centric, blood-obsessed, ambitious man we're familiar with.
The creativity with which Mailer uses these events of Adi's childhood is impressive, though at times it feels as if the story lacks focus. The story flits from one character to the next, oftentimes rapidly, at times focusing too much on sex (Alois' womanizing, Alois Junior's cruel and selfish affair with an old beekeeper, Adolf's masturbation style), other times retreating into a sermon on the absurdities of religion (Mailer even goes so far as to have the demon refer to God as the Dummkopf, which roughly translated, apparently means "dumbass").
The twist happens right at the beginning: Adolf is a child of incest. His parents are father and daughter, though neither is quite willing to let themselves admit it. As circumstances have it, they marry, and much of the rest of the book sets out to describe how this knowledge and its consequences influences both Klara (who thinks her children keep dying because of it) and Alois (whose powerful ego must constantly find ways to smooth over the rough spots caused by guilt).
The book ends when Adolf is 18 or 19, and we begin to really see the beginnings of the monstrous man he is to become.
Like I said, a strange book. It feels like Mailer tried to make it too many things and as a result, none of them really worked. I must say I wasn't sorry to reach the end.