The Blue Book of Nebo

The End came for the world in 2018. In 2026, a mam and her 14 year-old son start ‘The Blue Book of Nebo’ in their remote Welsh cottage home. The mother chronicling the early days of when the electricity went off and the modern world disappeared, the teenager detailing how they live their lives now.

The story switches between the mam and the lad, each narrating their own sections of the Blue Book. This puts together the characters developing relationship and shared history like a jigsaw, each placing down pieces till you understand the full picture at the end.

I stumbled across the (abridged) BBC audio version of The Blue Book of Nebo late one evening. I knew nothing of the novel, but as I’m of Welsh heritage, and spent a lot of my childhood visiting the country, I liked the idea of drifting off to sleep the cadence of Welsh voices.

The sleep never came though. I was too gripped by the actors’ performances as each took turns delivering monologues of their chapters. Each spoken word brought the character to life and drew me more into their world. When the last episode came, I didn’t want to leave their little Welsh home perched at the end of the world.