This is also evident in Jimmy’s commentary of his mother’s death: “I climbed onto the bed and pressed myself to her, as I had since I was a baby, to feel her, the land that was mine, but it was still.” Here, the composer employs dramatic irony to reinforce the strength of maternal-filial bonds, creating a lugubrious atmosphere in which the reader feels obligated to sympathise.

I didn’t know how,” where she successfully indicates how children are often confined as mere spectators and ingenuous participants in the adult world. For example, this is demonstrated in the quote, “I didn’t cry. The poetic and liberating narrative voice of Jimmy also enables the author to further accentuate the melancholic tone of the novel. Her use of a child’s marginally restrictive perspective provides the reader with the ability to foresee what Jimmy himself is unable to. He is intellectually disabled, described as both too fast and too slow: sharp in his perception yet unable to navigate the conventions of everyday life. In her novel The Eye of the Sheep, Sofie Laguna explores the growth of her young protagonist, Jimmy Flick, after the departure of his abusive father and the death of his mother. Additionally, both authors use characterisation to effectively communicate the impacts of complex societal issues and the upheaval in the domestic world on familial relationships.

Sofie Laguna’s The Eye of the Sheep (2014) and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John (1985), are domestic fiction novels of the bildungsroman form, in which both composers successfully capture an authentic narrative voice through their use of distinct, idiosyncratic perspectives, enabling readers to form a unique connection with the protagonist in their search for independence. Composers are often able to convey the difficult experiences of growth and maturation through their exploration of complex parental-filial relationships.

The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna