All The Places I've Ever Lived — David Gaffney

Fifteen-year-old Barry Dyer wakes up one day to find his body covered in strange metallic blisters and he can't imagine what is wrong with him. This is West Cumbria. Nothing ever happens here. But when he discovers that a teenage girl from his school was murdered the night before, he begins to wonder whether the two things are connected. Part murder ballad, part sci-fi, part ghost story, part true crime, All The Places I've Ever Lived takes you on a journey from the small-town murder of a teenage girl in the 1970s to the real-life multiple shootings in Whitehaven in 2010, linking these two appalling events in a way which illuminates the way a place and its people are shaped by the crimes that happen there. All the Places I've Ever Lived explores how communities become bound together by momentous public crimes, developing a shared responsibility for the incidents and a common ownership of the stories. These crimes become a lens through which a town is perceived, a way the community talks to itself about itself. Communities have to live with them forever. Along with the nagging, all pervading question - was there anything I could have done?