Amanda Given spent a peripatetic childhood people watching in South West England and Northern Ireland before her family emigrated to Tasmania when she was a teenager.She studied English, Speech and Drama at university, working as a teacher and social worker. Business management roles in large organsations led to posts in universities, property development and counselling organisations.Early short stories were published in magazines and anthologies.Making Old Bones is Amanda’s first novel, written in Suffolk where she lives by the sea and is an active member of the Felixstowe Art Group.
Gramwell Glade is Making Old Bones.A care home, purpose built around a Georgian folly castle façade in Essex, Gramwell Glade is making a fortune for business developer Akin Akindele who, armed with an MBA foresaw that high end care homes were going to return significant returns on his investment.It’s Making Old Bones of Pauline Graves’ career since moving from hospitality to head up the staff at Gramwell Glade and putting her misplaced hopes in a liaison with Akindele.It’s Making Old Bones of the dedicated carers who support its sundowners while supporting their own families on the small fiscal returns their efforts bring on the ‘living wage’.It’s laying old bones to rest. For many of the residents their time at Gramwell Glade is their first experience of surrender when it comes to real life responsibilities. That onus now falls to their ‘children’ who now have their parents’ Powers of Attorney and who are handing over the funds that would otherwise satisfy a mortgage sufficiently large enough to buy their own castle.If we know someone who works in the care sector or spends their twilight years in a home, if we visit family or friends who have moved on into residential care, make no bones about it, something like the Gramwell Glade experience could come to us all.
This is a novel about the discovery of age. For the Time Being heralds changed ownership for upmarket care home Grantham Glade.
After Making Old Bones, For the Time Being offers more insights and observations about the residents, their families and staff. In those busy corridors, flights of fancy, journeys of discovery, the gentle rolling of the day-to-day or, from time to time, the ache of grief make up the fabric of care now that the Baby Boom has become the Elder Epoch. Springtime sees the burgeoning of business for the owners and some of the staff with an uplift in the spirits of residents who have made or have been made to regard Grantham Glade their home.
In the beginning of this new year, under its very new, very corporate mantle, Grantham Glade has been startled by a fate that is possibly more difficult to manage than death when it is discovered that someone is has gone missing…
Stimulating day with the Felixstowe Book Festival hearing from Esther Freud, JoJo Moyes and Christopher Tugendhat.
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