3.2.1.12The text at a glance
Leon and his white half-brother Jake are taken into care when their mother Carol becomes unable to cope. Jake is adopted; Leon, who is mixed race, is not. He is fostered by Maureen, finds an allotment and two adult friends in Tufty and Mr Devlin, and rides across the city on a stolen bicycle during the riots.
Published in 2016 and set in 1981, the year of the royal wedding and of riots in several English cities. Adoption practice of the period favoured placing white babies, and siblings were routinely separated.
- the care system
- the arrangements by which the state looks after children removed from their families
- transracial adoption
- adoption across racial lines, contested in the period
- close third person
- narration that stays inside one character's understanding without using 'I'
3.2.1.12Characters
Leon's competence with Jake establishes a maturity that makes his own need invisible to adults, and his collection of objects for Jake expresses love as preparation.
Maureen's care is practical and unsentimental, shown through cooking and through defending him; her illness removes the one stable adult.
Carol is seen only through Leon's love, which withholds the adult judgement the reader might otherwise make. Tufty and Mr Devlin offer two versions of adulthood.
3.2.1.12Themes
Race determines what happens to Leon, and the novel never says so, leaving the reader to supply the reason. Anger is presented as the only available response to powerlessness. The allotment offers the one place where his effort produces visible results.
Common mistake
Writing that the novel explains why the brothers are separated. It deliberately does not, and noticing the silence is the point.
3.2.1.12The writer's methods
The close third person keeps the reader inside Leon's understanding, so institutional decisions arrive without explanation and adults discuss him in his hearing. The royal wedding and the riots are set against each other as images of a divided nation, filtered through a child's attention.
Worked example
Answer:
- The reason for the separation is never stated
- Close third person keeps the reader inside Leon's understanding
- The allotment is the one place effort produces results
- The wedding and the riots divide the nation the novel describes
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 2, Section A. The question is worth 34 marks and two essay questions are offered on your text and you answer one; no extract is printed, so quotations must come from memory. Allow about 45 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks, AO4 4 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.
Four of the marks are for AO4: vocabulary and sentence structures used to control meaning, and accurate spelling and punctuation. These are the cheapest marks on the paper and the easiest to lose by rushing the final paragraph.