Gypsy Boy: One Boy's Struggle to Escape from a Secret World

Written by Mikey Walsh

Narrated by Mikey Walsh

Mikey's family were Gypsies. They live in a closed community and little is known about their way of life. As he didn't go to school, the caravan became his world. But although Mikey inherited a vibrant culture, his family had a dark hidden history. Eventually Mikey was forced to make a decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere to belong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: May 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781407457390

Mikey Walsh

MIKEY WALSH left the Gypsy community and moved to London. It is the longest he’s ever stayed in one place. He taught himself to read and write and now works at a primary school as a teaching aid and also picks up the formal education he missed out on as a child. He is the author of the internationally bestselling memoir Gypsy Boy.

Reviews for Gypsy Boy

[evaberry · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a candid and in some ways terrifying window into the gypsy way of life. However, I don't think the author has quite decided what stance to take on it himself (maybe that's impossible in relation to your own life), and that makes it difficult for the reader to adopt a point of view. On the one hand he says gypsies don't deserve their bad reputation and have been "driven into" behaving as they do, which I'm sure is partly true and which I truly want to believe; on the other hand the book does not justify this view at all. It presents some of the awful things they do as age-old traditions which everyone in the community defends and no one wants to give up. The community comes across as violent, stuck in its ways, contemptuous, unfriendly and deliberately law-breaking, with little of the joie de vivre or colourful traditions I was expecting.The ending would also have benefited from the author gaining a bit more distance on the things he describes; as it is, he just glosses over the time after his "escape" as if it were of no interest to anyone, although it would have made a good success story. But I suppose in doing so he wants to protect his own privacy and that of the people who now surround him.Finally, the book (at least the edition I had) would have greatly benefited from a bit more editing work and a whole lot of proofreading!

[presto_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mikey, had a tough upbringing as a Romany Gipsy child, a brutal father who would beat him on a daily basis, and an uncle who for or a time a who would abuse him weekly in perhaps an even worse way. Mikey new he was different, he did not relish the violent ways of his people, but it was not until puberty that he realised the full extent of his difference; and with that came the realisation that his only way to survive was to escape.Gipsy Boy is Mikey's own account of his childhood. With minimal schooling and introduced early into adulthood as is the ways of his people, he manages to find only the occasional respite from his torturous upbringing until while still little more than a child he finds his way out with his first love, and this not with a woman or a fellow gipsy. Mikey's story, reveals a lot about the Romany Gipsies once proud way of life, their contempt for other races and even other gypsies. It is both frank and very moving book, a book that is difficult to put down once one starts reading; highly recommended.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I almost gave up after the first 30 pages, it was evidently another misery lit book. I tried a second time with the audiobook version which made a big difference. Performed by the author, he injects a lot of emotion through the use of "pregnant pauses" that makes it hard to stop listening. It's interesting in parts, but mostly a depressing litany of illiterate people living in trailers, drinking and drugs, stealing and swearing, wife and child beating, incest. The Romany culture isn't romanticized in this account, and that may be the attraction, a Gypsy tell-all.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm fascinated by Gypsies for some reason, and this book was an interesting window into their rigid culture. I guess when you've been the victim of so much violence you need to externalize it by describing every instance in great detail, but it made for difficult reading. The end of the book, where Mikey finally finds happiness, felt rushed and perfunctory. All in all, interesting but not a work of art - which only the greatest memoirs achieve.

[coolmama_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Brutal story of Mikey's life growing up in a Romany family in England. Beaten to a pulp by his father who wanted him to be a fighter, sexually abused by an uncle, this story was harrowing. Mikey ran away from home as a teen when he discovered he was gay and could not live in his environment.