Hamlet & Me

Mikey Cleary is a bright boy from a working class, Anglo-Irish family who lives in a confusion of worlds, each with its own senseless rules and bizarre inhabitants.Why does police sergeant 'Killer' Wells chase Jim the Bookie and never catch him? Why won't Mikey's father talk about the War? The streets around Mikey's house were flattened by the German bombers just twenty years before and everyone is obsessed with the War, but Mikey's dad won't talk about it; he won't even tell his son how he won his gold medal.Hamlet & Me is a darkly comic story in which young Mikey faces crises at home, at his new school and at the Old Vic theatre where Peter O'Toole is playing a reluctant Hamlet under the irascible direction of Laurence Olivier. The novel is set in London in October 1963, during a week in which Mikey's granny dies, the National Theatre is born and Mikey learns important lessons in tolerance, understanding and loyalty from the characters he meets in the streets surrounding his home, the local street market and the theatre.Mikey's encounters with his friends and neighbours and with the actors at the Old Vic shape his growing understanding of his world.