The Tin Moon — Stephen Lacey

SUMMARY:
Set against the backdrop of an urbanizing Australia in 1969, The Tin Moon is the brilliant, humorous story of a boy just trying to make sense of his parents, his teachers, and his new neighbors. While Neil Armstrong is landing on the moon and the Vietnam War is raging on television, Jimmy Smith is most concerned with wreaking havoc on the "city people" who are gentrifying his country village, the hippies living in a bus, and understanding how his parents can be so absurd. Filled with humor, nostalgia, and the search for meaning that lies at the heart of childhood, The Tin Moon is an extraordinary debut novel from a great new talent.

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Once Nanna took me on the train to Sydney. When we were getting near the city I could see down into people's backyards. They were all held apart by rusty corrugated iron. Nobody grew any vegetables. There wasn't room for anything at all except for a washing line and a dunny.

'Yards like pocket handkerchiefs,' Nanna said.
'We won't have to worry about going to the city, the city's coming to us'.
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Jimmy Smith runs like the wind, sings like an angel and wears a gas mask in his father's valiant. He knows the winner of every Melbourne Cup, eats Choo Choo Bars and tends to his ant farm.

Jimmy lives with his extended family in the country village of Point Henry. It's 1969. Neil Armstrong has just landed on the moon and Vietnam War is raging on television sets across the world. But Jimmy is concerned with matters closer to home... the 'city people' are coming, bringing their pole houses and cul-de-sacs with them.


The Tin Moon is much more than a rollercoaster ride of wickedness, love, parental stupidity and everything it means to be a boy. It's a search for meaning, and the sacred spaces of childhood amidst the shrinking fibro frontier.