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

A moving account of childhood, growing up in a multiracial family in the 1960s and 70s. This book tells the problem of racial and class prejudice from the inside as well as the strangeness of some of the beliefs of the Jehovah's witnesses. Amusing, touching, it will make the reader evaluate their own childhood

I am very pleased and proud that our white family has been blessed with new members from Nigeria and India. Unfortunately, I also remember from my days growing up in the 1960s and 1970s how pleasure was more likely to have been pain and prejudice substituted for pride. In post-war Birmingham and other inner cities around the UK immigration from other countries was not welcomed, rather ridiculed, feared and hated.It is against this background that Kit de Waal has written a memoir of her childhood: Without Warning & Only Sometimes. In her family, immigration was not just about the colour of skin, but geographical, social, and religious contempt for the country’s nearest neighbours. Kit’s mother was white and from Wexford in Ireland. Her father was black and from St Kitts. She and her brothers and sisters were, therefore, not only of mixed-race appearance for the general public to judge and dismiss, but also held in contempt by the wider family members on either side. Her mother would talk to the ‘white’ in them and her father, the ‘black.’Throw into this mix Kit’s mentally disturbed mother being persuaded to join and then becoming the strongest advocate of a message of salvation from Jehovah’s Witnesses, and you can only imagine from a safe distance the fault line over which these children had to jump daily, never quite knowing when or where it might appear, hence the title of the book.Though they worked hard at menial jobs, the children were born of poor parents and poor parenting. I remember well those signs outside of boarding houses and ‘hotels’ promising paradise but not for ‘blacks, Irish or dogs.’ Later, Kit turns up for job interviews via her mother’s Irish surname and is turned away immediately because of the colour of her father’s skin.The tale is beautifully written and, as one also born in 1960, memories of the corner shops with their stern, prescriptive shopkeepers and quiet, boring Sundays which were only ‘special’ in their dullness, were refreshingly evocative. It is a world that has all but disappeared now; its idiosyncrasies reduced to details in a book which new generations of readers will be unable to relate to - barely even believe.She also manages to describe these memories so convincingly from the viewpoint of a child from an early age through to her early ‘twenties. This isn’t a ‘look back in anger’ memoir as much as a transport yourself back and see the world through the lens of a child all over again.I suppose there is always the temptation to believe that things could not have been quite so bad as this; that the horror of uncertainty must have been embellished if only a little, for dramatic (and commercial) effect. I was lucky enough to hear Kit speaking at a literary event recently and my opinion now is that things were probably even worse. Her brother, especially, found it hard to even think about his childhood beyond two pages of Kit’s draft, let alone allow himself to be taken back to such dark days.Kit herself was friendly and down to earth and authentic, as this memoir undoubtedly is. Though still suffering from occasional anxiety (and who, after reading this, could fail to understand why) she is refreshingly upbeat and positive: a survivor. Having witnessed the results of a TV production team completely butchering her breakthrough novel – My Name is Leon – I hadn’t felt compelled to read the book itself. But I shall now.

How does an unhappy marriage work? This beautifully written book explains the chaos, the loneliness of the parents, the cheap tricks we play on each other such as (Dad sneering at Mom), the desperation (Mom being laughed at for dressing up and wanting to look good), the weakening of parental authority, the way the children escape (for instance, leaving home early) and many other aspects. It is worth reading just for this angle, let alone all the others (with a father from St Kitts and a mother from Ireland, life in Birmingham in the 60s and 70s, the role of girls, being creative...). 'Without warning...' shares much with Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges' — the Jehovah's Witnesses mother here creating some of the issues for her children which ran through Jeanette's English Pentecostal upbringing in Lancashire.

Enjoyed the book as a Brummie born of Irish parents. Identified with the poverty and as a reminiscing of childhood was intriguingly beautifully written. The final pages of the book changed pace with the introduction to grown up encounters and a development of a love of books created a wonderful insight into the capacity of the author Kit to write so engagingly. Thank you for the book a truly emotional read.

I enjoy memoir's and especially enjoyed Kid de Waal's novel My Name is LeonKit de Waal was brought up in Birmingham to an Irish mother and a father from St Kitts in the 1960s. Life was different then, but also perhaps very similar. Your life as a child is very much governed by the family you belong to, and Kit's was fascinating, but I'm not sure I would have swapped!The backdrop to her life were the thrice weekly meetings of the Jehovah Witnesses, her father's rules around silence in his television room while Kit and her siblings crept around the ill-suited couple finding joy in the mundane and shielding themselves from the harsher aspects of a life spent with little to spare, in part so their father could return to the land of his origins to show what he had made of himself.The tale is told with good humour prompting laugh out loud moments interspersed by sadness that took my breath away.

As you’d expect from Kit De Waal, this is a well written memoir that engages the reader. The book covers the authors childhood and life up until she discovers books. I’m guessing there’ll be a part 2 - what happened next. The author clearly had a tough working class childhood, but the story is told with warmth and ,humour. It never becomes sentimental but it also doesn’t stray into the I lived in a paper bag territory of competing for the worst childhood. Good, honest writing.

An interesting insight into a childhood, which occasionally resonated with me but also detailed the challenges of growing up in a discordant marriage, with the added dual heritage dynamic.An excellent read which I found hard to put down

Found this book by chance! I love a good memoir and this one fitted the bill nicely. Very well written and paced .really enjoyed the era the humour and the pathos. I would recommend it to anyone!