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Serious Things

Serious Things (Sceptre, London, 2008) is a novel about adolescent friendship and desire, and life in ‘the prison of consequences’ years later. Structured like a crime thriller, it is an exploration of guilt and atonement, touching on themes of ecological crisis and sexual identity. Norminton’s research for the novel involved visits to English public schools for details of the setting – a particular focus of this research was Wellington College, where he had worked as a writer-in-residence in 2000 and had many contacts. A trip to Kuala Lumpur in 2006 enabled him to research the detail needed to make the Malaysian scenes authentic, with extensive photography and note-taking. He conducted a subsequent research trip to the off-grid community on the Scoraig peninsula in Scotland, where locals advised him about the practicalities of their remote existence. He consulted research by Dr Doug Gilbert of the RSPB on sea-bird die-off, and studied accounts of the 1990s road protests by Paul Kingsnorth and Jay Griffiths. In particular, he made a study of the Twyford Down (M3 extension) direct action movement that began in the early 1990’s. The ecological strand in Serious Things connects it to contemporaneous novels such as Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army, and was the theme of a seminar for the Cultures of Climate Change research group, led by Bradon Smith and Ben Morris at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University. Following publication, Serious Things was reviewed favourably in newspapers and journals in the UK, Australia, Belgium and France.