Amande's Bed

Amande's Bed is the story of Peem, a small boy growing up in the 1950s whose father is communist, whose mother isn't all that well and whose city is Aberdeen, a post-war place of broken people and general poverty. He is clever; he loves "words ending in o, Mikad-o, Meccan-o, Gepett-o, Ghett-o"; in so many ways this is a novel about what happens to words and to wide-eyed cleverness and hope.