Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | My Name is Leon | 2016 | Kit de Waal | Buy |
| 2 | The Trick to Time | 2018 | Kit de Waal | Buy |
| 3 | Becoming Dinah | 2019 | Kit de Waal | Buy |
Kit de Waal’s three standalone novels share a preoccupation with characters who have been pushed to the margins and must find their own way through. My Name is Leon (2016) is probably the most widely read, following a mixed-race boy in the Birmingham care system during the early 1980s Handsworth riots. The writing is closely observed and the emotional weight is considerable, but de Waal keeps the prose spare rather than sentimental.
The Trick to Time (2018) shifts to an older narrator, an Irish woman in Birmingham whose grief over a lost love has quietly shaped her entire adult life. Becoming Dinah (2019) moves in a different direction again, aimed at younger readers and following a teenager who escapes from a controlling community on a road trip across England.
All three books reflect de Waal’s background in social work and law, and her interest in characters whose inner lives rarely get much attention on the page. Readers coming from My Name is Leon will find the same careful, grounded prose in the other two novels.