Bumping

Bumping is set on contemporary Tyneside, and interweaves three stories. Each presents a character whose obsessions and attachments become magnified through chance encounters, leading to unforeseen and ultimately catastrophic results. The 'bumping' of the title conveys something of these random processes, as well as one character's passion for recreational lock-picking. The stories are told in a number of voices. The themes include relationships with home and place, male preoccupation with mechanisms and systems, moral evasion, and the tyranny of random events. Bumping is about obsession and longing on contemporary Tyneside. It is also a novel about youth and old age, lock picking and Californian ladybirds.