Meet 13-year old Thomas Penman, the endearing hero of Bruce Robinson's highly acclaimed first novel. In a family of eccentrics in which husband and wife wage silent war with each other, Thomas forms a special bond with his beloved grandfather, a bit daft due to a wartime head injury and prone to an outrageous and scandalous nasty habit. With the sly humor and irreverence of A Confederacy of Dunces, this impressive debut novel traces Thomas's painful and often hilarious rite of passage into adulthood. Thomas smokes his first cigarette, has his first drink, and pursues the object of his affection, the gorgeous Gwendolyn Hackett; and what begins as a routine search for his grandfather's legendary pornography collection, culminates in Thomas's discovery of the truth about his family life even as it collapses around him.