Special tells the story of Annie, a mixed race woman with a learning disability, from her birth into a working class family in late 1950's Liverpool to her death fifty years later.
The novel follows Annie as she is moved from the family home to the large, prison like institution of Mandelstones, a place that becomes her world for much of the next quarter of a century. As she grows from a child to a woman, we see Annie experience adventure, abuse, friendship, love, rejection and finally, in her final years, acceptance and belonging back within the by now much changed working class community of Liverpool.
