Without Warning and Only Sometimes, Kit de Waal
Without Warning and Only Sometimes, Kit de Waal
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Without Warning and Only Sometimes
'Extraordinary. Moving and heartwarming' The Sunday Times

Author: Kit de Waal

Narrator: Kit de Waal

Unabridged: 8 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tinder Press

Published: 08/18/2022

Synopsis

From the award-winning author of MY NAME IS LEON, THE TRICK TO TIME and SUPPORTING CAST 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.

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

About Kit de Waal

Kit de Waal is the author of MY NAME IS LEON, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, THE TRICK TO TIME, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a short story collection, SUPPORTING CAST, and a memoir, WITHOUT WARNING & ONLY SOMETIMES, which was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. She is also editor of the COMMON PEOPLE anthology. MY NAME IS LEON was recently adapted as a film for BBC Two.

Reviews

Goodreads review by The Cookster on July 18, 2024

Rating: 3.8/5 This book is part of this year's Quick Reads programme from The Reading Agency. I am very much a fan of the scheme, which is primarily aimed at encouraging people to take up reading or to get lapsed readers to re-engage with the activity. Rather than being an original short story, this c......more

Goodreads review by Debbi on December 29, 2024

For a short read it sure does pull a punch. Love Kit de Waal 😍......more

Goodreads review by Nicola (Not Just Books) on May 04, 2024

One of this years quick reads books, it is a good introduction to this author and her work. I found it an interesting read. It gave me insite in to a social history that can sometimes be hard to read but was done so well with this book.......more

Goodreads review by charlie.s_chapters on January 29, 2025

Alright, this was strange. I feel like this was just a collection of chapters from a larger book. I mean that could be true, I don’t know. Just as it got more interesting it ended so maybe there is more to this story but I’m not sure I will be rushing to find out. I’m not really sure what else to sa......more

Goodreads review by Mia on October 13, 2024

(3.5) It's hard to rate memoirs, feels unfair. I did enjoy this read, it was very fast paced and felt like a journey. The social history aspect considering race and religion was also very important. However I don't think I'll think about it again after finishing it. "I start to think I might not die.......more

Quotes

Extraordinary . . . De Waal has a gift for the deft detail that will bring a story or character alive . . . A moving, heart-warming account of a girl who grows up in a house with no books except the Bible, gets in with a bad crowd and nearly goes under. In the end, and after she has left home, she is saved by books. When she can't sleep she reads the classics. Now she may even have written one Sunday Times

An astonishingly good evocation of the dream and reality of migration to postwar Birmingham Observer

A terrific evocation of her family life in 1960s Birmingham Financial Times

In the end, this is a survivor's story. It doesn't pull any punches, but it ends with a girl determined to live, to "turn the page and keep reading" Telegraph

Intelligent, angry and sometimes very funny Scotsman

Dynamic and immersive, Kit de Waal's effervescent memoir documents a fraught childhood of opposites and conflicting identities with wit, humanity and an uncanny power for bringing the figures of her youth to vibrant life.

A delightful and harrowing book. I can't think of another since Edmund Gosse's Father and Son that gives such a well-written child's-eye view of an upbringing in a suffocating Christian sect . . . I highly recommend Irish Times

This is a sometimes bleak, often funny tale of finding a way to live through reading, which is all the more amazing given the only book in Kit's house was the Bible Radio Times, Book of the Week

Kit's writing is beautiful - vivid and compelling, and so moving. Families are such a mix of joy and pain and Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic was both painful and comforting to read. There's so much love, warmth and hope. I wanted to keep reading this book for ever

I knew Kit de Waal was special the moment I met her. And now I know why

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List