[LISTENED TO: August 2016] Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me
The title of this book sounded weird and fun. So I grabbed it from the audio book collection at the library and we listened to it on the way home from vacation.
Set in Long Island (narrator Emily Bauer does some great Long Island accents for the adults (and a few kids) in the story), this is the story of a young girl, Tamara Ann Simpson (Tammy) growing up on Ramble Street in 1969 just a few weeks from the Moon Landing!
But that’s miles away. Because it is summertime and all she can think about is kickball. Well kickball and her friend Kebsie who took off all of a sudden one day without even saying goodbye.
Kebsie was Tammy’s best friend. She lived in a foster home on Ramble Street. They did everything together and even had a secret “arooo” signal. They were BFs and even bought necklaces to prove it. Kebsie was a straight shooter and took no crap from anyone. And then one day, she was gone. As we understand it, her mother returned and took Kebsie away to secret place because there was some kind of abuse in he family and they needed to be removed from everyone they knew.
Filling the foster house is Douglas “Muscle Man” McGinty. And Tammy hates him. Hates. Mostly because he took Kebsie’s place, but also because he is such a liar. He lies about everything. Obviously, he tells everyone that Neil Armstrong is his uncle. But he also tells other lies, like that he’s training for the 1972 Olympics, or that he’s sung on Broadway. And nobody seems to call him on it. Tammy knows that he’s a wormy liar, why does no one else? Not even the adults seem to notice his lies.
In fact, he’s always super nice. Even to Tammy. He tries to do a lot of nice things for her, but she just can’t stand him and his fake smile and his future lies. She can’t get past it.
And then he tells the ultimate lie. He says that he can beat all the kids on Ramble Street in a game of kickball. Well even the other kids can’t allow that to go unchallenged. And finally Tammy is happy because that wormy liar will finally vibe shown for the fraud he is.
The kids on Ramble Street take kickball very seriously and while they may tolerate Muscle Man’s lies, they cannot allow their reputation to be smirched by this kid. And so they set up a match–all dozen or so kids on the street against Muscle Man.
But Muscle Man is still smiling. He’s smiles when she strikes him out, (and even compliments her pitching), and he refuses to back down. Even when he gets his butt handed to him in kickball, he is still smiling. Indeed, when he has a chance to strike out a 5 year old, he pitches it to her very lightly and then doesn’t even try to get her out.
All of this makes Tammy insane. She is so angry about everything that he has done, she can’t wait for him to wilt and cry, but he never does. When the other kids try to go easy on him (the Ramble Street team are up by some 30 runs), she refuses and gets mad at the rest of her team. She wants the rules to be followed exactly–no leniency for this liar. In fact, it must be said that Tamara is a horribly unlikable main character. I really disliked her a lot. Between never saying thank you, to being so stubborn and unfeeling, to the way she is completely blind and yet still superior, there wasn’t much to redeem her.
And indeed, there must be something about her whole family that no one likes because while everyone is invited to street-wide parties, when certain families have family parties, Tammy’s family is never invited. Not even to the big moon-landing party.
So, this is the point in the story where we stopped the book when we got home. A few days later I resumed the book and it suddenly became a very different story.
Tamara has an older brotehr, Tim, who is in college. He and their dad fight all the time. Tim is a hippy with long hair and he argues that his father works for the man. Tammy’s father can’t believe he works so hard and still has to deal with his son’s disrespect.
Tim also has a friend, Vinnie who lived down the block. Tammy loves Vinnie as well–he’s practically family. But while Tim is in college, Vinnie is fighting in Vietnam (I didn’t see that coming, despite the time frame of the book).
And soon enough, things in Vietnam become far more important than a kickball game (even if Tammy doesn’t think so). Vinnie sends home a letter to Tim and Tim asks Tammy to pass along the news to Vinnie’s dad (which she doesn’t actually remember to do).
The story gets really heavy.
Tammy has received a letter from Kebsie that says nothing–nothing! Tammy poured out her heart to Kebsie and she wrote nothing back. Tammy might actually talk to her mom to see if Kebsie is trying to say something between the lines (Tammy’s mom helps her see the truth by making her watch soap operas with her). Also, why is her family always fighting (unlike the other happy families on the street). Why does no one else hate muscle man? And why does he like that nickname when she gave it to him to mock him? And why is he so nice to her?
Again, I should have realized that Vietnam would play be a part of this story, but I was really only expecting something about the moon landing. And that did come at the end in a cool way.
But I have to say re: Tammy’s parents, even if your daughter does something horrible and is grounded for the rest of the summer, how can you not let her watch the moon landing? That is simply too historic to be missed.
So this story started as a kind of irritating funny book about kids on Long Island and turned into something very different by the end.
There were a few things I didn’t like about the book (there were a lot of things unspoken–which is kind of a subtext in the story–but I felt some things should have been cleared up more). What’s the story with her parents? Why does no one invite them to their parties? What’s up with the foster home? IS there something more to the fight with Tim and their dad?
But if I can ignore those things, and I can, it proved to be a very powerful and quite moving story. Much more intense than the title led me to think it would be.
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