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

Whitley Bay Book Group discussed Without Warning and Only Sometimes in June 2024.

We chose this book because the group had previously read and enjoyed Kit De Waal’s novels My Name is Leon and The Trick to Time, and admire her work in supporting writers from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is non-fiction, a memoir of the author’s chaotic childhood in 1960s Birmingham as one of five children of an Irish mother and a West Indian father, both of whom are dissatisfied in different ways with their lives and neither of whom have much idea of how to bring up children.

The group was divided on this book. Some of us liked it, and liked the fact that it wasn’t essentially a misery memoir. Although the parents were inadequate and often forgot to feed the children, they did love them, and Kit and her siblings formed a tribe of bright children who supported each other. The memoir is episodic, with some of the anecdotes very amusing, for example the description of the length that Jehovah’s Witness girls have to go to in order to meet suitable boys, and why Kit’s brother had to wear Lederhosen all of one summer.

Others of us would have liked more misery, and thought that compared with for example the fictionalised version of Douglas Stuart’s childhood in Shuggie Bain, Kit’s childhood was relatively unremarkable, and nothing much of interest happened.

We all liked her writing style and thought that she described characters well. The young Kit is an observer, and clearly on course to be a writer.

We gave the book between 1 and 4 stars with an average of 2.5.