‘It’s early in the morning,’ a boy writes in his diary, ‘on the first day of the first year of the most modern decade in the whole of human history. Get in the groove! Already the world is so cool. And it’s going to get cooler and cooler. Forever!’
The seven-year-old boy, one of many middle children in a nuclear family, lives in a twice-mortgaged new bungalow in a new cul-de-sac in a suburb during the Space Age. ‘We’ve got our bloody dream home,’ jokes his mother. ‘And we have to skive our guts out to bloody pay for it.’
Not Swinging, Swooning is the story of the boyhood years of Stevan Eldred-Grigg, told by himself. A story about a boy’s dreams, dreads, hopes, fears and adventures. A story about elbowing and being elbowed by five brothers, three sisters, Seven Sisters, many aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbours, friends, teachers, foes, heroes. A story about teleshows goggled by the boy. And about pop songs he thought were groovy. And about yarns spelled by the olds. Along with other tales he was told, or told himself, about being a boy – being in a suburb – and about becoming, or trying to become, a young man in the mod optimistic hi-gloss world of the sixties of last century.
It’s hip. I dig it.
Far out .
This is my favourite book by Stevan Eldred-Grigg so far. I loved and pitied the main character and was rooting for him to survive his family, his school, his teenage years.
Ellen Walshe –
This is my favourite book by Stevan Eldred-Grigg so far. I loved and pitied the main character and was rooting for him to survive his family, his school, his teenage years.