Nan: the life of an Irish Travelling woman

I was looking forward to reading this book on an Irish Traveller family written by an anthropologist.

I was rather disappointed. It appeared that Sharon Gmelch took her PhD (or paper research) and sort of fashioned it into a more "readable" form in a popular title...

I had hoped to learn the "inside

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story" of the travellers -w hat do they like about the life, is it hard or easy, their customs, language, etc.

Nan was a traveller by choice. She grew up in a settled house, and only really took to the road when she left her first husband and 4 children (they were taken away). It is a book of co-dependence, there is much violence, drinking (which Nan never mentions herself, but medical records do show how ravaged she was by it), and really a lost and illererate woman's tale. This tale begins in the 1930s, and her husband was a very abusive man - however, it is a totally one sided tale (until the epilogue) of a woman who clearly had no coping mechanisms except to run away and abandon her 10 children. A sad tale.

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