Structure, Narration & Voice
Narrative Voice: The Child’s Perspective
De Waal tells the entire novel through Leon’s third-person limited perspective. We see, hear, and understand only what Leon does. This is the novel’s most powerful structural choice because it creates a systematic gap between what happens and what is understood.
The child’s perspective forces the reader into an active role. We must interpret what Leon cannot. When he describes Carol ‘sleeping all day’ or ‘smelling funny,’ the reader recognises depression or substance use. This gap generates both empathy (for Leon’s confusion) and anger (at a system he cannot fight because he cannot name what is happening).
De Waal chose third person rather than first person (‘I’). This provides slight narrative distance — enough for the reader to see around Leon, to notice things he misses. A first-person narrator would lock us entirely inside Leon’s head; third-person limited lets us understand his world while also seeing its larger patterns.
Language Register: Simple and Sensory
The prose style mirrors Leon’s age and understanding. Sentences are often short. Vocabulary is concrete and physical. De Waal uses sensory language — touch, smell, taste — rather than abstract thought. Leon experiences the world through his body: the warmth of Jake against his chest, the smell of Maureen’s cooking, the cold of institutional corridors.
Short sentences: Create urgency, mirror a child’s thought patterns, and convey emotional intensity without elaboration. “He holds Jake. He won’t let go.”
Concrete nouns: Leon’s world is built from objects, not ideas — bottles, blankets, gardens, doors. Abstract concepts (racism, institutional failure) are experienced as physical realities.
Present tense: De Waal writes the whole novel in the present tense, so events feel as though they are happening now, beside Leon.
Minimal dialogue tags: Conversations are often presented without ‘he said,’ creating a sense of voices happening around Leon — sometimes over his head, sometimes directed at him with no context.
Structure: Three Parts
De Waal writes in short, dated chapters rather than named parts. These lessons group them into three phases, each a stage of Leon’s experience and a widening of the novel’s scope from domestic to political:
Part 1 (Domestic): Leon, Jake, and Carol at home. Intimate, claustrophobic. Part 2 (Institutional): Separation, foster care, diminishing contact. The system takes centre stage. Part 3 (Political): The riots, Leon’s quest, the personal-political fusion. The scope expands to the whole community.
This three-part structure mirrors a process of radicalisation: from private suffering (Part 1) through institutional betrayal (Part 2) to political awakening (Part 3). De Waal suggests that personal injustice and political injustice are not separate phenomena — one leads to the other.
Temporal Structure: Non-Linear Elements
While the novel is broadly chronological, De Waal incorporates flashbacks and memory fragments that disrupt the forward movement. Leon remembers moments with Carol, with Jake as a newborn, with his absent father. These memories intrude on the present, showing that Leon’s past is never truly past — it inhabits his current reality.
Slow pacing in Part 1: Time passes in domestic rhythms — feeding, sleeping, waiting. This mirrors the monotony and trapped quality of Leon’s home life.
Ellipsis in Part 2: De Waal skips time between contact visits, creating gaps that mirror the growing distance between Leon and Jake. What is omitted is as important as what is shown.
Acceleration in Part 3: Events compress. Chapters shorten. The prose becomes more urgent. This structural acceleration drives toward the climactic riot scenes.
Memory intrusions: Flashbacks arrive without warning, often triggered by sensory details (a smell, a sound). They show Leon’s inability to separate past from present — a hallmark of childhood trauma.
Silence and What Is Not Said
One of De Waal’s most distinctive techniques is the use of omission. Things are not said directly. Leon names his own colour on the first page, but no one ever explains to him what it will cost him. Carol’s diagnosis is never named. The adults’ decisions are made off-page. This technique trusts the reader and mirrors Leon’s experience of not being told what is happening in his own life.
The silences in the text are structurally significant. When Leon stops mentioning Jake for stretches of Part 2, the reader feels the suppression of grief. When Carol disappears from the narrative, her absence speaks louder than her presence did. De Waal uses what is not written as deliberately as what is.