Gregory Norminton

I was impressed with how this narrative of two young boys is presented in a unique way narrated by one of the two preemintent characters in the story. The book emphasizes the psychological effects of our actions and the importance of how our lives are influenced by how we respond to those actions.

The story tells of two lads at a traditional boarding school who develop a close bond that will influence the rest of their lives. Anthony Blunden has Bruno Jackson, the quiet and lonely son of British expatriates, completely smitten. The boys are inspired to investigate the "more serious matters" of life outside of college after being taken under the wing of an idealistic English teacher. But, in the intense environment of the school, a slight from their mentor looks to be of utter significance and will have irrevocable effects.

Years later, with those memories all but forgotten, Bruno lives a blameless life. Anthony's unexpected reappearance pushes him to look back on his dark past and determine how far he is willing to go to appease his conscience.

Overall it is both riveting and a subtle novel about an undetected crime and its corrosive legacy for the schoolboy culprits, by a young writer that I would recommend to all.… (mere)

Andagin is hunting across a heathland in the south of Roman Britain two thousand years ago, but he is about to discover something that threatens him and his communities safety and means that he will have to betray a family member.

Two millennia later, two troubled men have a differing opinion over the same landscape that Andagin and the Roman occupiers once walked. Aitch, haunted by the effects of war wants to use it as he sees fit and Robbie's father struggling to cope with the fallout from a divorce is passionate about protecting it.

In a future world, a broken world where heathland has become desert. A gang of feral children flee slavery and conflict in a time of war, hiding from those pursuing them, heading to a part of the country where rain is believed to still fall from the sky.

These three stories all have a common trace, The Devil's Highway. A Roman road constructed across Bagshot Heath, to Sunningdale and to Silchester and beyond. The historical, contemporary and dystopian stories are layered and intrinsically linked by this terrain and the road that traverses it. It is a story that shows how humans over the course of 3000 years irreparably alter a landscape and a planet. We go from a tribe who are in tune with the natural world who have been taken over by invaders who couldn't care less, to a modern world where almost no one cares, to a bleak place where the planet has stopped caring back. I really liked the Roman and modern-day tales, though I must admit I struggled with the language with the mob of children set in the future though. The way that the stories were draped over the same landscape was really well done too, elements in one would be visible all the way through. I grew up in the vicinity of this area, so places in the book were very real to me. This book made me think a lot a couple of days after reading it and while I thought that mixing the stories up a chapter at a time was good, but I think for me it would have worked better having them as three separate novellas within the same book.… (mere)