The Castle in the Forest - post II

Watching an interview on the Culture Show with Stephen Poliakoff tonight he remarked that in the drama that is showing on the BBC on Monday night, Capturing Mary, there is a character played by David Walliams, the tall one out of Little Britain, that is almost supernatural in its darkness. Although not too much of the plot was given away it seems that he is an evil man who tries to snuff out someone’s ambition and passion through controlling them.

When told it was almost supernatural Poliakoff said that he tried to shy away from that and make the evil at least grounded in a believable person.

It seems as if that is not something Mailer is worried about with the narrator stepping forward describing himself as an agent of the devil, some sort of demon, that was influencing the events leading up to Hitler’s birth as well as working for Himmler as a special investigator at the start of the story.

In chapters that describe Hitler’s father and mother it becomes clear that the father was a womanising drunkard who had not time to worry about the feelings of his three wives – with the first two dying – before upsetting the third who was probably his daughter as well as Hitler’s mother.

After three children die sex becomes something that does not come naturally to Klara but she finally succumbs to the plunging hound and with a little help from the devil on his shoulder the pair of father and daughter or at the very least cousins manage to conceive Hitler.

More to come…