Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood - Paperback

by Kit De Waal (Author)

'Vivid and compelling and so moving... Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic is both painful and comforting to read' Marian Keyes
AS BROADCAST ON BBC RADIO 4
From the award-winning author of MY NAME IS LEON comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted, and true.

Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse and childminder sometimes all at once and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn't have on cars, suits and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.

Caught between three worlds, Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham, Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.

WITHOUT WARNING AND ONLY SOMETIMES is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day

Author Biography

Kit de Waal is the author of the novels MY NAME IS LEON, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, and THE TRICK TO TIME, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and a short story collection, SUPPORTING CAST. She is also editor of the COMMON PEOPLE anthology, and co-founder of the Big Book Weekend festival. MY NAME IS LEON was adapted as a film for BBC Two.