The Leaves

by Jacqueline Rule

He’s in a new home, turning his bag upside down, emptying the contents onto the rug in the middle of the room. It was there, he knows he packed it, the framed picture of his mum, he saw it inside his bag in the social worker’s car. In the picture, she sits. In her rocking chair, their chair, a small pillow tucked behind her, jutting out behind her elbow. Little Cat is on the shelf behind the chair, a row of his books, the window slightly open. Sun pouring through, the photo slightly overexposed.

Faith and Evelyn are close friends, neighbours, and single mothers of Luke and of Mitch – and both bear the scars of the trauma of colonisation and the Stolen Generations. When Faith dies unexpectedly, Luke’s childhood in Sydney is severed into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ and a chain of catastrophic events is unleashed that will alter the course of his life.

Navigating the upheaval of a broken foster system (that serves as a pipeline to poverty and incarceration in ‘juvie’), The Leaves is a bittersweet meditation on motherhood and loss, on the power of female friendship, and the role of the state in perpetuating violence.

Luke’s journey exposes the aftermath of colonisation, as the nature of punishment, historical trauma and healing are examined. In doing so, the novel reveals the cruelty and futility of the youth detention system, and the violence of the law itself.

Through the pursuit of unattainable justice for Luke, The Leaves raises larger questions about a society that is yet to take responsibility for its own historical crimes.

Genres: Australia

176 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2024

Reviews

[Veronica ⭐️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling and affecting. A must read.

The Leaves follows the life of Luke and the events that pull this, much loved, little boy away from his heritage and into a spiral of cruelty in the broken social welfare system as he goes from foster care to being homeless then to a youth detention centre. By the age of 15 Luke has been in 18 different foster homes whilst all this time his mother's best friend Evelyn has been denied care. Evelyn never gives up the fight until Luke is completely lost to her in the system.

Jacqueline Rule's writing is evocative and poetic. Beautiful in its execution, devastating in its content. Much of the novel is written in poetry.

Luke is not just one boy but an embodiment of hundreds of boys and girls being failed by the system.
Even though The Leaves is small at 176 pages it had a massive impact on me. Luke's story is one that will stay with me forever.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Leaves is a harrowing story, one that leaves the reader drained and dispirited. It's the debut novel of Jacqueline Rule, a lawyer and academic from Sydney whose work in a legal organisation brought her into contact with children caught up in foster care and youth detention. She believes that the novel is an innately political form which can advocate for a more empathetic and humane approach to how our society reforms young offenders. 

The story begins with the close friendship of Faith and Evelyn, both single mothers raising their children Luke and Mitch, who are close together in age.  Neither of these women have friends or family as a support network because efforts to unite them with family or community through Stolen Generations reunion pathways have failed.  So when Faith dies suddenly of meningitis, the social welfare system becomes responsible for Luke's welfare, and for reasons depicted as inexplicable, they reject Evelyn's attempts to become Luke's foster parent.  She tries very hard to do the right thing by her friend, impoverishing herself in the process, but is unsuccessful.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/05/25/t...

The GR website is acting up today, shelves not working properly and reading dates not working at all. My reading dates were 24/5 25/5/24

[Jim KABLE · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Things Missing from the Picture

This is a tenderly drawn yet horrific creation of how a callous national past plays out through successive generations into ugliness within so-called carer families and the juvenile justice system wherein lies no accountability. The stories my brother told me of his work as a trades-based person appointed as a youth worker to Endeavour House in Tamworth were of appalling treatment of the lads - the superintendent embezzling funds to build his house in the coast the least of it. The writing of Professor Tony Vinson decades ago concerning the dire need for prison reform is still in 2024 being countered by the ignorance of politicians of “lawn order” punishment platforms. Michael Gliksman a clinical psychologist working with abused and emotionally disturbed children wrote a book titled Bad Boy - Penguin, 2003. Jacqueline Rule has somehow in her writing managed believably to get inside the head of the boy whose story she tells. This book should be given to every politician and person involved in any level whatsoever of our so-called justice system - juvenile and adult.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an easy read from the perspective that it is very short - more a ‘novella’ of just 160 pages. But this is an incredibly traumatic read otherwise.

The book follows Luke’s journey through the Australian foster system, homelessness on the streets of Sydney, and finally and tragically through the youth justice system.

The writing is sparse and has no dialogue - I felt like I was reading the book form of a documentary. Large sections are poetry rather than regular text, so it is a very unique book that gives you ‘a vibe’ of what is going on and the environment rather than creating a visual in your mind with lots of scene description. Poetry is not really my thing so I expect I missed a lot of the nuance in these sections.

What was really well conveyed was the trauma of Luke’s journey and how it just seemed to be compounded each step along the way. This book really lacked hope - I think this was the message was author was aiming to get across given her career as a lawyer in the juvenile justice system.

[Rachael McDiarmid · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars because I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I read it. The "what if" scenario plays around in your head. The book is NOT an easy read. It's absolutely gut-wrenching. Harrowing. It's about a young Indigenous boy who ends up in the foster system when his mother dies. Then "juvie". And then... well you just have to read it. It's a short book so you'll read it in one sitting. It's the type of book that should be on school curricula and in every library in Australia.

[J S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy raised by single aboriginal mum and what happens to him in foster care and the system after she passes away. Her mum's friend wanted to care for him but was denied and he was moved around until he tragically lost his life in a detention centre and of course the videotape was inadvertently taped over so no evidence could be found. Very moving and based on real life

[Chanel Chapters]

DNF
Writing style wasn’t for me