June 2018 Debut of the Month | Boy Underwater is one of those rare books that manages to be both very funny and heartbreakingly sad. Being pulled to safety from the bottom of Lewisham Pool by classmate Veronique (losing his trunks in the process) is a terrible experience for Cymbeline Igloo, as it would be for any 9 year old, but it leads his mum to have a breakdown. Cym has never understood her determination to keep him away from water, but now it’s only by uncovering the family secrets that he can give her the help she needs. Cymbeline carries the story brilliantly, confiding in readers all his confusion (the adult world really is incomprehensible), his concerns and his hopes, so that we live it as he does. What he finds out is horribly sad, but leads to a new beginning, and a kind of healing.
Cymbeline (yes, really!) has never been swimming - not ever, not once - so he's a bit nervous at the prospect of his first school swimming lesson ever. But how hard could it be? He's Googled front crawl and he's found his dad's old pair of trunks. He's totally ready for this. But he's not ready for an accident at the pool to reveal a family mystery that turns his life completely upside down. Only Cym and his friends can solve it because, as usual, the grown-ups aren't telling them anything. For the answers you really need, sometimes you have to go deep . . .
Adam Baron is the author of five successful novels and has, in his time, been an actor, comedian, journalist and press officer at Channel 4 television (as well as things he's too embarrassed to mention). He now runs the widely respected MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University London. Adam lives in Greenwich, South London, with his wife and three young children. He wrote Boy Underwater (his first novel aimed at younger readers) because they told him to. While still in the flush of youth he knows what his final words are going to be: `clear the table'.
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