LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 55

51, going to university for the first time to do an MA in creative writing.
“I remember sitting with some other writers who were either saying,
‘Ooh, I just really love words’ or ‘I just really want to write a book,’ and
I was going,” – she hammers her hand on the table to make the point –
“‘Book. In. Waterstones.’ It’s not for my drawer!” she laughs, her soft
Brummie accent peppering her speech.
Born in 1960, De Waal grew up in Moseley, Birmingham, as one of six
children. She left school at 15, went off the rails for a bit, and came
around to reading in her early 20s. She spent her first post-hedonistic
year consuming sombre military novels recommended by a colleague
before discovering – and devouring – the Penguin Classics, and forging
a career in criminal and family law: working in social services, training
foster carers, being on an adoption panel and becoming a magistrate.
This experience, she explains, is why her debut novel, My Name Is Leon,
took her less than a year to write. “There was no research to be done at
all – to me, it’s all very familiar.”
We had an offer that I was floored by, and I was like, 'Sign it, sign it,
sign it – before they change their minds!'
The book is told from the perspective of Leon, nine, who ends up in
foster care with his baby brother, Jake, only to discover that social
services have arranged for Jake to be adopted by a separate family. Leon
becomes vaguely aware that this blond-haired, blue-eyed baby is
different from him: Jake’s father is white, Leon’s father is black, and
Leon wonders if they’ve been separated because they don’t look like
brothers.
With two adopted children of her own, De Waal – who wrote two
unpublished “sprawling thrillers” before this – admits she was scared of
writing this story. “You don’t casually write about vulnerable people for
your own entertainment – or anyone else’s, for that matter. I thought,
how am I going to be true to social workers, to foster carers, to birth
mothers, to adoptive parents, to black men, to multicultural England?
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