The Apprentice Witnesser by Bren MacDibble

Title: The Apprentice Witnesser

Author: Bren MacDibble

Genre: Adventure

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 30^th April 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Bastienne Scull is nearly twelve years old and lives a simple life as an apprentice to the Witnesser of Miracles in a small village mostly populated by women and girls. Basti knows that miracle-hunting is a lot like mystery-solving, and her little world is full of wonder and intrigue and unexpected adventure. A supremely enjoyable middle grade novel from the multi award-winning, bestselling author of How to Bee, The Dog Runner and The Raven’s Song.

That’s what my photos are. Little moments. All the good moments, the kind moments, the moments of care and love that, if you add them all together, make a life sweet.

Bastienne Scull is a young orphan who lives with the local Witnesser of Miracles, Lodyma Darsey, who investigates ‘miraculous events’ and spins them into stories she tells at the night markets.

After Lodyma’s husband and elder son died of a sickness that continues to sweep the land, she sent her teenage son Osmin into the hills to live with the mountain men. That was ten years ago, and Lodyma doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead. And she’s taken Bastienne as an apprentice to fill the void of her lost family.

One day, two young boys arrive in town asking Lodyma to go on a mysterious mission to a monastery. And when Lodyma and Bastienne arrive, what they discover will change their lives.

A wonderful novel, full of hope, courage, resilience and family.

~*~

Living in 2072, in what feels like a post-apocalyptic or post climate emergency future, Bastienne Scull is living with Lodyma Darsey, the old woman in her small community known as the local Witnesser of Miracles – meaning she investigates ‘miraculous events’, and then turns them into stories to tell at the night markets.

The world they live in is simple, further inland than our current world, and often plagued by sickness – a sickness that killed Lodyma’s husband and oldest son, so she was forced to send teenage sone Osmin into the hills, to live with the mountain men. This is a world where men and women are separated due to the waves of sickness, where they can’t come together as a community because there is said to be too much risk. So Basti records the little moments that those in Atherton see as miracles, helping Lodyma determine what is, what isn’t, and making her own secret record of things with an old Instax camera. But Lodyma is still hurting after sending Osmin away ten years ago, and has no idea whether he is alive or dead – and Basti is filling the void of a lost family, after having lost her own mother to sickness years ago.

The story builds slowly for the first few chapters, until two boys in pink robes, and with shaved heads show up. They’ve come to ask Lodyma to come to Ravenshoe, a mysterious monastery – but they won’t tell her what her mission is. And what awaits Lodyma and Basti will change everything they know forever, and change everything that Basti understands – and will test them and their relationship, and the world they live in.

Bren MacDibble’s latest novel is much like her previous novels that explore a world in healing after disasters that destroyed it, and the way we make our own families and societies. Where most dystopic or post-climate change novels can be a bit depressing or feel as though there is no hope, the thing about Bren’s novels is that she lets her characters have hope, lets them reflect on the past and what led them to where they are, and allows her characters to explore the world around them, their feelings and shows just how people have had to adapt, acknowledging the difficulties for those who knew a the world before what she has created, and how her characters like Basti, respond to what she is told or shown from the past and the way she lives in Atherton. Some things she questions and other things she doesn’t – but throughout the novel, she is constantly growing and learning, finding ways to bring a ragtag family together, and what family means – it’s not always biological, as Basti has come to learn over her years with Lodyma, yet something will unsettle things in this book. And that makes the second half of the novel work so well, because whilst as a reader you are unsettled in a way – in the same way that Basti is, trying to work out what her place is in the world and wanting her to find it and be part of something, there is a sense that something will work out in the end. There is always hope, it seems. Even if we don’t know where to find it, or that it has always been there.

I think that’s what makes this book and Bren’s other books work so well – the realities of what could be coming are there starkly, yet there is a sense that communities can work to change this and ensure that the world doesn’t fall apart. Bren does this sensitively and carefully, without casting blame, without scaring people, and without preaching. Her world just is – nobody is at fault, it’s a collective thing that has catapulted the world into what Basti knows. It is a gentle story that reminds us to take of each other, and take care of the world we live in, and make sure love is what we take with us.

This gentle and touching book is one that will make an impact, and make people think about the world going on around them.