The realistic fiction describes the uneventful life of Dylan Hughes, the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. There aren’t many jobs in his small town, and so everybody keeps moving away. When Dylan’s friend Mohan leaves, he is the only boy left in his school. Manod is a pretty lifeless town which is referred to as the rainiest spot in Britain with the lowest crime rate. It is home to a small community of people who live a dull life aside a mountain at the edge of town which is the site of a defunct slate quarry. This means the whole mountain, and much of the town, is covered in the uniformly gray color of slate. Sadly the weather just adds to the dreary mood as it is always rainy, grey, foggy, and hardly fascinating at all. Dylan’s parents, the Hughes, run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage where Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. The stale town of Manod finally has something of interest take place, though as a fleet of mysterious, official-looking vans head up the misty mountainside to the abandoned quarry and set up camp. Who are these people? And what do they want with the mine? Are the questions the people of Manod ponder.
Dylan’s sister Minnie is convinced that the mysterious strangers are involved in a secret spy ring. Lester, the leader of the group, comes into the gas station and becomes fond of Dylan, thinking he is someone other than he appears, believing he is a young art lover. Although, Dylan is actually talking about a different Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael than the Italian Renaissance artists, he was referring to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The reader finds out Lester is a curator for the National Gallery of Art in London. Thanks to a series of recent floods in London, the famous museum has been entirely evacuated, and the priceless artworks have been relocated to Manod for safekeeping. Lester shows off the extensive collection that is hidden inside the mountain to Dylan. Then, Dylan convinces Lester to display the paintings in Manod, one at a time.
This story is inspired by a press cutting describing how, during World War II, the treasured contents of London’s National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines. Once a month, a morale-boosting masterpiece would be unveiled in the village and then returned to London for viewing. This book was amazingly and creatively written, and it really just showcases Frank Cottrell Boyce’s impeccable writing that makes one laugh and smile at each element of this story.
A particular element about this book that made it unique from other books I’ve read for me was the Author’s craft. It was the overall tone the author portrayed throughout this story that I found captivating. He creates the mood of a dull, ordinary lifestyle, and continues it throughout the book until he hints the reader that there is more to the story. This had to do with the fact that is was a realistic fiction book. Since a realistic fiction book is meant to be set as a believable [realistic] story that could actually happen in life, this impacted the tone of the story because the book started out very normal with nothing out of the unusual going on. The author illustrates this boring perspective, that this community of people live a dull lifestyle beside a mountain and then he presents the reader with a bit of rising action and mystery as a turn of events happens when a new crowd rolls in. I thought the author really portrayed the drab town, characters, and tone of the story very well.
The tone goes along with the characters of the story, because the community of people living in Manod also had a certain mood to them that made them very interesting and unique. The character of Dylan Hughes always looks on the bright side of things, and he really has to stay positive because a lot of things about Manod can get him down. Like the fact that he is the only boy in Manod and he doesn’t have anyone to play ‘a decent game of soccer with.’ Or that everything is always the same in Manod, from the weather to the same grey tint on everything. He also wishes that his dad, who owns and runs the Snowdonia Oasis gas station, could get a little more business for his garage so that his family doesn’t have to worry so much about money. Even so he keeps his head up about Manod and says,’All the other mountains around here have grass on the top. Ours is covered in broken slate. Basically they turned the mountain inside out. I mean, how many towns have got an inside-out mountain at the end of the High Street?’
This leads me to the theme of the book. The theme of the book, was an element of the story I thought was very interesting and that really went hand in hand with the genre of the book, which was realistic fiction. I saw prominently throughout the book as it sets the storyline as a realistic fiction, that the book was kind of showing that there is sometimes more than meets the eye in life. It showed this as it presented a very stale lifestyle, and then showed there was actually more to it. They have something interesting going on within their community that they didn’t even realize before. It shows that there is beauty in everything, and that there can even be for Dylan, his big, loving family, and his community, through artwork that really just makes people respect the natural beauty of their hometown. This story is really just an awakening for these people to be grateful and see the beauty in everything in their town, that only Dylan really saw before. To respect their mountain that their ancestors climbed to work everyday, to respect each other and their shops within their small town. To feel proud of the fact that this is their hometown. This book presented a transformation of ideas, beliefs, beauty, and love, through the perspective of Dylan Hughes. With the inspiration of these great artworks, the townspeople use their own ingenuity and talents to turn Manod into the thing of Hidden Beauty that Dylan always knew it was. to the transformative power of art in their own surprising ways, readers may feel inspired to find — or create — beauty in their own communities.
