Structure

The short story “The North London Book of the Dead” by Will Self presents the narrator’s encounter with his mother on the streets of London ten months after her death. 

The narrative has a chronological structure, and the events are spread over the course of ten months. The story begins with a presentation of the days before the narrator’s mother’s death: “Mother’s death was a kind of relief, but it was also bizarre and hallucinatory. The week she lay dying in the hospital I was plagued by strange sensations” (p. 113, ll. 9-11). This foreshadows the unusual and unlikely events that will follow.

Other foreshadowing elements are introduced when the narrator imagines his mother “striding down Gower Street” (p. 114, ll. 3-4), or when he feels “her spiri...