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'John Aberdein's Amande's Bed was without doubt the best Scottish debut novel, a beautifully wrought fusion of the postmodern with tradition, creating a wholly authentic new voice – think lyrical Grassic Gibbon meets ludic Vonnegut.'
Gavin Wallace, Head of Literature, Scottish Arts Council
'While it may often be surreal, it's never incomprehensible; there's a temperance and control which gives a sense that there is hardly a superfluous word. Overwhelmingly, it's a book of grand dreams in little lives and of tragedy only a single breath from delight.'
Katie Gould, The List, June 23rd, 2005
'John Aberdein's Amande's Bed (Thirsty Books) is a remarkable debut. It's a bold, presumptuous and demanding book, written in a cacophony of tones, dialects and timbres, including an unabashed Doric. What strikes me most is that I can't tell 'the story' because it's a quixotically democratic book; everyone has their secrets, their hopes, their adventures and their imminent changes. If your idea of committed left-wing fiction begins and ends with social realism, then Aberdein's gloriously knotty, occasionally surreal novel will open your eyes.'
Stuart Kelly, Books from Scotland, Review of 2005
Amande's Bed first came out 20 years ago and was hailed immediately as a Scottish classic by reviewers and critics up and down the land.
Set largely in Aberdeen in 1956, Amande's Bed is the comic-tragic story of a lively working-class family and their interactions with hard-driving bosses and challenged communists, with inspiring teachers and NHS nurses, with strong-minded but still suffering war-survivors like German Ludwig and French Amande.
The novel opens with Madge, at home and mother of four now, recalling her honeymoon days with Andy, hiking high together in the Cairngorms. She is not at all well, but hasn't yet gone to the doctor, perhaps fearing how bad the news might be. Tough-talking Andy is working as an electrician in the local fertiliser works. But it is actually the adventures and questionings of their 10 year old son, Peem, which form the backbone of the novel.
The novel is in vivid, richly-worked English, while the local dialogue is given in authentic Doric. 'Dinna deave! said Dad. Deaving was one of the things never to do, along with being unreasonable, saft in the heid, scunner, minker, dwaumer, Greetin Teenie or tink. There was small room left for manoeuvre.'
Early in the novel there is a weird shipwreck, and Amande lands up having to rear their wild son, Spermy, while fending off jealous prejudice against her as an attractive foreign widow. Amande makes friends with a feisty young Fife nurse, Dinah, herself recovering from a spectacular sundering from her boyfriend.
Many sub-plots, both comic and desperate, develop around subsidiary characters – such as with Peem's inspiring teacher Mannie Martin and their mutual passion for artistic Miss Florence.
Until, just as the beloved social gathering of Christmas approaches, young Peem gets horribly trapped, and with apparently zero chance of survival.