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Sunday, 4 December 2011

Mikey Walsh - Gypsy Boy

review by Ro Bennett on recorded show dec 2011

I bought Gypsy Boy after hearing Corinna’s review of The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney. I read somewhere that the subject was very difficult to research and she had drawn on this book as a reference, so I bought it.

I found it very readable and a page turner. It was brutal and shocking but it also made me laugh.

Mikey was born into a Romany Gypsy family and the story is about him growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. His father was delighted when he had a son, presuming he would continue the family tradition as bare knuckle champion. However Mikey was not cut out to be a fighter and his father became increasingly contemptuous and vicious toward him.

The book reveals the horrendous physical abuse at the hands of his father and sexual abuse by his Uncle Joseph that Mikey suffered in his childhood. It also describes the attitudes, culture and life style of the Gypsy community in general. It made gripping and interesting reading and had a feel-good ending.

However, once I had finished the book and was browsing the reviews, I began to question the validity of the story and my own prejudices. I realised that I had been quite willing to believe the stories he told portraying the gypsies as ignorant, deceiving, stealing, cheating, lying and violent until one reviewer asked, ‘Is it a true story?!?...I could not help thinking - after having read it - that it was written as a pamphlet against the Roma people by a radical racist’.

Another wrote:
I was expecting to be offered a thought-provoking glimpse into an oft-misunderstood way of life. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that Mikey Walsh was pandering to the average Daily Mail reader's prejudices. Literally every Gypsy mentioned in the book is ignorant, violent and unpleasant. At the very end, Walsh tries to shift the blame by saying that it's Irish Travellers who are the thugs (nice one; not at all racist) and Romany Gypsies are peaceful folk... all except the violent, thieving psychos he's spent 200 pages describing, I guess.
And these reviews certainly gave me pause for thought! This was reinforced by the Publisher’s Note, quote: Mikey Walsh is a pseudonym. All names and other identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of Mikey’s family. Some characters are not based on any one person but are composite characters.

So that left me wondering whether or not it was a true and accurate account of his actual life. On the other hand there were many more rave reviews. So, the jury is out....

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