1961

A teenage malcontent attempts to survive the eponymous year in Dann’s debut YA novel.

After his parents split up, Ralph “Spook” Halliday and his mother, Rose, leave the small Australian mill town of Karnook for the big city of Melbourne. Spook isn’t happy about any of it; he’s furious about the fact that his dad is gone, his mother has uprooted him, and he has to leave his pet tadpoles behind (so furious, in fact, that he dumps them out on the ground and squishes them with his foot). He hates their new apartment above the dress shop owned by the opinionated Mrs. Green, which isn’t at all like the American apartments he’s seen on television. “There are many stains at Mrs. Green's not properly accounted for,” Ralph notes with horror. “The floorboards in his bedroom. The lino in the kitchen and passageways and bathroom. The carpet in the TV room. All bear stains of dubious origin.” Rose signs Ralph up for the local technical school, where he’s introduced to his new peers: the know-it-all Thickness (named for his Coke-bottle glasses), the profanity-flinging Wocker, and Tina, a magnetic figure who inspires strong competition among the boys. “Saving” Tina from the local Rockets gang (they want to “give” Tina to a member as a birthday present) becomes Ralph’s greatest fixation, but the method of the boys’ rescue may end up doing more harm than good. Dann’s prose skillfully captures Ralph’s sullen perspective, particularly in dialogue, as when Rose brags to Ralph about how she got the apartment at a discount due to the fact that a man died in it during the recent heat wave: “ ‘Where did he die?’ ‘I don't know all the details, Ralph.’ ‘Was it in my room?’ ‘Ralph, you said you wouldn't do this.’ ‘You said there wasn't a smell! You said it was must!’ ” The narrative is episodic and some chapters lag, but readers will be charmed by Dann’s now exotic-seeming world of early 1960s Australia and find themselves thoroughly immersed throughout.

A darkly humorous coming-of-age novel set in Melbourne.