The Boyhood of Harvey

‘Our planet's for big thinkers. That’s why I feel so at home on it’ Harvey Smith, an eighteen year old bilateral leg amputee, lives in East London with his sister, Jackie. It’s an arrangement that is doomed to end when her new boyfriend, Alfonso Barrera, announces they are moving to Spain. Yet Harvey's concerns for his future are soon forgotten after reading the Arctic adventures of Simon Draper, a double leg amputee himself, who experienced phantom limb sensations so real he believed he could stand and run. Harvey is driven to replicate this experience and makes plans for his own journey. Yet he soon begins to question his motives and the demands he places on others. Can his desire for physical and mental rehabilitation be so easily resolved? Set against a backdrop of nineteen eighties political unrest, the story follows Harvey’s trackless path towards independent adulthood, as he confronts not only his own disability but the unerring nature of life itself.