Although these two books are separate entities, they do follow on and cover pretty much all of Mikey’s life (so far), so it made sense to review them as one, especially as I ended up picking the second one up almost as soon as I had finished the first.
Mikey was born into a Romany Gypsy family. They live in a closeted community, and little is known about their way of life. After centuries of persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and if you choose to leave you can never come back. This is something Mikey knows only too well. Growing up, he rarely went to school, and seldom mixed with non-Gypsies. The caravan and camp were his world.
But although Mikey inherited a vibrant and loyal culture, his family’s legacy was bittersweet with a hidden history of grief and abuse. Eventually Mikey was forced to make an agonising decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere he could truly belong.
I have always been intrigued by “alternative cultures” and wondered what it would be like to exist within one.
Granted, there are programmes available on TV around this area, but the suspicious side of me will always think they are over-hyped to get the ratings in, so I tend to stay away from them. There are also views expressed in the news quite regularly as well, most (if not all) never painting these “alternative” communities in a very good light.
So, with that being said, I was very much looking forward to reading this book to get a little more insight into one of these less-known world.
The first book, Gypsy boy follows Mikey’s life as a young child right up until the moment he decides he has to leave the camp in order to save himself from the abuse he had grown very accustomed to.
From an early age, Mikey was expected to continue his families tradition of being well known bear-knuckle boxers in the community, however Mikey always knew this is was not going to happen for him, so he was seen as a constant failure by his father who would give him regular beatings to try and toughen him up, although this had the opposite effect and made him more distant from everything around him.
Eventually he was sent to his uncle in a last attempt to turn him into the son he was “supposed to be”, however this would also have even more drastic consequences for Mikey as he was then subjected to sexual abuse along side his almost daily physical abuse.
There is a lot to cover in this first book and I don’t think I can do it justice by trying to review every part of the book here, so I would implore you to pick up a copy and invest some time in Mikey’s world.
Eventually Mikey finds love in an unexpected place, in the Gorgia (non-Gypsy) community and runs away to start a new and hopefully improved life on the “outside”.
This is where the second book takes over, with Mikey still on the run after his father put out a contract on him, not because he had run off with a Gorgia, but because he had “stolen some of the family gold” (this was not true, but for reasons that are obvious if you were to read the books, you can see why he had to concoct this story).
Throughout the course of the book, Mikey travels throughout the UK, trying to find home in four of the biggest cities including Liverpool, Manchester and London, each time life does not go as well as hoped for Mikey and time after time finds himself back at square one having to rebuild his life and support network.
There is so much more to this book and whilst reading it, emotions quickly switch from feelings of Joy to outright horror at the experiences that Mikey has had to go through.
Does the book go anywhere towards dispelling the mystery and “bad press” which surrounds the Gypsy community, no it certainly does not, however it does highlight that the Gypsy community is very traditional in it’s thinking and it will always go out of it’s way to support what it believes in, even if that is not something the Gorgia community can understand or respect.
Mikey is not the author’s real name, for many reasons and although he does interact with people on Social Media, there are big gaps in his online “life”, so it’s hard to know just exactly how Mikey is getting on in life these days.
It’s not often I feel so much for a character in a book, be it fiction or non-fiction and although I can not even start to claim I have had experiences anywhere near as bad as Mikey, I could associate and appreciate some of the feelings he must have gone through as there have been many “rock-bottom” very emotional times in my life.
So my hope, is that Mikey is now in a much better place and has found some sort of happiness in his life, he certainly deserves it after all he has been through.
Overall Rating (both books) – 5.0 / 5.0
