A Prayer for My Son

by Hugh Walpole

Mother learns of grandfather's sinister influence over the family which her young son has been living for ten years.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have been neglected since his death.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This belongs to the Man With The Red Hair Walpole, and is again a story of a sadist, in this instance a grandfather with an overweening ego and a thirst for a gratification of his sense of power. The boy’s mother, his aunt, the boy himself are prey to his madness, and the story gathers momentum until they are forced to escape from the setting which gives him his power.

A magnificent book with a great story written by Hugh Walpole.

5* Rogue Herries
5* Judith Paris
5* The Fortress
5* Vanessa
5* The Bright Pavilions
4* Captain Nicholas
3* The Old Ladies
4* Portrait of a Man With Red Hair: a romantic macabre
4* A Prayer for My Son
TR Joseph Conrad
TR All Souls' Night
TR The Green Mirror, a Quiet Story
TR Katherine Christian
TR The Captives
TR Anthony Trollope
TR Jeremy
TR The Dark Forest
TR Fortitude: Being a True and Faithful Account of the Education of an Adventurer
TR The Duchess of Wrexe Her Decline and Death: A Romantic Commentary

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Prayer for My Son is not a completely successful novel, yet I found it entertaining. Like much of Walpole’s work it mixes the gothic with humor and deals with a contemporary family in crisis. Where sometimes this works wonderfully (like in my favorite Walpole novel, Captain Nicolas) here it never quite gels. Walpole invokes the Bronte sisters with a plot involving an ogre of a man who keeps everyone in his country house prisoners. His own daughter is declared mad for defying him and locked in her room. The Colonel idolizes Hitler and attempts to use his grandson to create an “Important Man,” something he has been unable to accomplish in his sad life. Walpole tries to create a mythic landscape of his beloved Cumberland, but his descriptions mainly come across as forced and a tad boring. The novel’s harrowing ending is disrupted by a ridiculous series of encounters by those who try to escape the Colonel’s house. It’s a strange work that never seems to be able to make up its mind exactly what to be