Kit de Waal is the award-winning author of _My Name is Leon, The Trick
to Time, _and _Supporting Cast. _Her work has been shortlisted for the
Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for
Fiction, and _My Name is Leon_ won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the
Year. Now she brings us 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 the story of an extraordinary
childhood. It is the story of a girl who grew up in a house where the
Bible was the only book on offer, and how she went on to discover a
love of reading that inspires her to this day.
We hope you can join us for an evening hearing more from Kit on this
remarkable new memoir.
