The Blue Book of Nebo

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Dylan was six when The End came, back in 2018; when the electricity went off for good, and the ‘normal' 21st-century world he knew disappeared. Now he's 14 and he and his mam have survived in their isolated hilltop house above the village of Nebo in north-west Wales, learning new skills, and returning to old ways of living.

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Manon Steffan Ros was born in Snowdonia and worked as an actress before becoming a writer. She writes for adults and children and has won the Wales Book of the Year for her adult fiction as well as being four- times winner of the Tir na N’Og Welsh children’s literature award. She has also won Eisteddfod and National Theatre Wales awards for her drama writing. She lives in north Wales with her sons.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Manon Steffan Ros’s latest book is her own adaptation of Llyfr Glas Nebo , which won the Prose Medal at the 2018 National Eisteddfod and the 2019 Wales Book of the Year Award. Although she has won the annual Tir na n-Og Award for children’s literature several times, it is fitting that The Blue Book of Nebo is recognised as outstanding in any genre, for it will engage and move both young and older readers. Unusually for a post-apocalyptic novel, the crisis is not set in the future – we know that a world-wide nuclear disaster did not happen in 2018 – but it asks questions about survival and isolation suddenly brought home to us all during the coronavirus pandemic. Perhaps most importantly it asks what post-disaster world we really want, or need. The Blue Book of the title is a shared diary, written by Dylan and his mother Rowenna, containing the thoughts and secrets of their life in an isolated house, high above the Menai Straits. In 2018, when Dylan was six, some kind of nuclear attack (referred to as The End) cut off all power and communications. Dylan begins writing the Blue Book when he is fourteen, thoroughly adapted to their hard but self-sufficient life, growing food and salvaging materials from the deserted village nearby. Rowenna made a point of salvaging books to help her educate Dylan, and an important strand of the story is their reconnection with their mother tongue. Dylan names the diary thinking of it as a successor to The Black Book of Carmarthen and The Red Book of Hergest , both of which describe and preserve lost or destroyed ‘worlds’ through poetry and fiction. There are echoes of the Bible, particularly the story of Noah. Dylan explores the Jesus of the gospels and whether that story is like all the others in his wide reading, and finds a consolation in it which his mother cannot. Manon Steffan Ros is celebrated as a playwright as well as a children’s author, and here she creates very powerful and rounded characters through their own words. Rowenna’s memories of the world before ‘The End’ show glimpses of her difficult earlier life, but we already know her as immensely strong and resourceful. The book is tightly focused on the family’s life with little speculation about the wider world, but the few relationships they have (with Dylan’s baby sister Mona and with a pet hare, for example) are beautifully and poignantly realised. Dylan, although he was a six-year-old used to tech-toys and mobile phones, almost immediately became fascinated with growing things, and he matures naturally into a farmer with little sense of loss. However, as he reaches puberty his feelings are confused, and a scene in a deserted house where he sees a teenage girl’s photos of her life and friends is most sensitively imagined. Many comments on the book refer to its hopeful tone, and certainly the development of the central characters is very positive both in their survival strategies and their growth into who they should be. Without revealing the ending, I could say that the wider future which is hinted at appears more threat than promise. Firefly Press is well known for producing a wide range of delightful and challenging books for children and young adults which retain their appeal for older readers. This promises to be one of the best.