Customer Reviews

Young Adolf (Bainbridge, Beryl)

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This book probably will not appeal to the ardently politically correct. They would recoil at the concept of not only a novel with Adolf Hitler as the central character, but also the fact that this book is very funny indeed.

I laughed out loud a number of times reading this novel. Bainbridge's humour is devastatingly ironic. The novel follows a twenty three year old Adolf Hitler as he blunders his way through a stay in Liverpool in 1912 with his brother Alois and his Irish wife Bridget. Because of the humour, the reader can at times find themselves with a degree of sympathy for the rather hapless and paranoid Adolf. Whenever that happens, however, Bainbridge hits you again with a subtle turn of irony that lets you feel justifiable contempt for him. In short, this Hitler is a loser -- a future powerful figure cut down to size. Without wanting to give anything away, Bainbridge also explains why Hitler had that odd moustache -- "He [Adolf] resolved to grow a moustache. Never again would he be mistaken for a woman." Very funny, believe me!

This is a wonderful read that will certainly be appreciated by those with an interest in history and a sense of humour about it all.

William Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool where he lived with his Parents. One indeed was Alois Hitler the half brother of Adolph. With this book Ms. Beryl Bainbridge stepped into what could have been controversial ground. Historically based fiction is a familiar foundation for her work, and this one is excellent.

In, "Young Adolph", the Author imagines a trip he might have taken to visit his brother in Liverpool when he was 23 years of age. To the extent there is humor in the work it is at the expense of her subject who on his best day does not rise above pathetic, and when drunk becomes a raging lunatic. If this sounds familiar it should, as the Hitler of History was so painfully ordinary it is almost beyond belief he did not die on the street during one of his homeless periods.

The Author brings about several events that are not earth shattering until you place them in the context of the Evil that was to be Hitler. Some are relatively minor as when we learn how his ridiculous hairstyle came about. However Ms. Bainbridge also hypothesizes where some of the events and practices that later would shake the world and resonate to today, may have started.

The book is as interesting as many Historical Works I have read about this genocidal maniac, and in some ways it carries with it more impact than scholarly studies of the creature. When portrayed as he has been presented here, the horror he becomes and unleashes on a good portion of the world, is either amazing or terrifying and probably both. An evil genius would be an understandable character, however such an unlikely character that History elevated to one of the great mass murderers of the 20th Century is as far from genius as language allows. And this is what Ms. Bainbridge illustrates so well in this work.

A grim, bizarre little novel with no sympathetic characters. Adolf bears scant resemblance to his real-world namesake. Except for certain cute allusions to the future Führer -- we learn where the brown shirts, the weird hairstyle, and the toothbrush moustache come from, for example -- Adolf might as well be a completely fictional young sap. The plot is haphazard. For some reason a bleak, Dickensian underworld figures prominently without significantly altering or influencing Adolf other than requiring him to do a lot of fleeing.

Bainbridge's gift for depicting menace and squalor are put to much better use in her novel Watson's Apology.

Pre-World War I Adolph Hitler is a total incompetant. Young Adolph comes to Liverpool to live with his brother Alois & his Irish wife. He is to helps his brother in his new business. But he cannot do anything right. He is depressed & paranoid. A total loser. It is a funny book, fiction yet chilling because we all know what really happened.

I have very serious doubts that basic fact of this book is historical, but as a fiction this book is very good

One of the benefits of writing fiction is that it can be stocked with characters which derive their existence solely from the author's imagination. Writing about real people on the other hand should impose certain restrictions upon the author. The biographical approach may well require preparation and research, to arrive at as close an approximation as possible. Alternatively, a historical figure may feature in a novel, as for example, Charles de Gaulle in "The Day Of The Jackal".

Adolf Hitler has featured ad nauseam in both categories, but this book is a hybrid. It's based on the premise that in 1912 he came to stay in Toxteth, Liverpool, with his half-brother Alois. This claim has been the subject of thorough investigation, and exposed as untrue, but if Miss Bainbridge knows this she ain't letting on (and if she don't, she should). Instead, she's produced a fictional concoction about a real person, masquerading as fact. This conceit might be justified if the result cast new light upon Hitler's character and motivation, but sadly that is not the case (indeed, how could it be?). I was left feeling that both her writing, and my reading of it, had been a sterile exercise.

This was a strange little story set in Liverpool, England before the outbreak of the Great War when young Adolf was 23 years old. It is based on the little-known "fact" that Hitler visited his half brother in England from November 1912 to April 1913. The book was definitely imaginative but too fictitious to be taken seriously. Don't expect to learn much about the young Hitler from this book.