Una Clarke has recreated teenage life in a small country town in Australia in the late 1930s. The novel is largely autobiographical and brings to life in vivid personal detail both the tribulations and the humour of family life in a world still suffering the effects of the Great Depression. It is a world where the Principal of the town's small school can attempt to ban movies in the town; where the family's temperaments are linked to the overall depressed state of the rural economy; where recycling is one of the major sources of income for poor children. It is, in fact, a world that no longer exists. Yet it deals with the universal themes of teenagers struggling to find self-worth; parental love and parental disharmony. It is much about learning to 'make do' with meagre resources and of facing the harsh realities of country life.