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

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Such a strong memoir that makes me want to read more of Kit de Waal's backlist, those books I keep telling myself I'll get to when I have the time. If you are still wondering how to get free PDF EPUB of book Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood by Kit de Waal. As she reached adulthood I became shocked and saddened by how she lost her way, but then at the end was saved by books . They both want us as their audience, for the depository of their dreams, for their excuses, justifications, explanations.

It's a memoir filled with warmth, joy and heartbreak, written with the immediacy of a thriller and the poignancy of a love letter. There was a third and unexpected development in the book to do with "going off the rails" but once again there was that underlying hope. Like their parents, they long for escape, but unlike them seek flight to better places that actually exist, through music and books and the teeming life of Moseley outside their unhappy, falling-down home.Kit de Waal navigates the intricacies of growing up Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham in a family home that struggles to contain 4 siblings, a perpetually working mother, a withdrawn and imposing father, and their collective memories, hopes and failed aspirations. 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. While their mother works one of her many day jobs Kit and her siblings scour the house for anything approximating food.

I too just wrote a ex-Jehovah's Witness memoir, mine is a FULL COLOR, Comedic, educational, feminist graphic novel titled CULT GIRLS, based on my memoir of my divorce and the friends around me in the Jehovah's Witness cult. The latter was close to my heart and so this book was a comfort to me, not only because someone else was sharing that but also because the author had been able to acknowledge and rise above what she knew felt wrong. Mom and Dad, Sheila and Arthur, aren’t so much bemused as utterly thrown by life as it is presented to them.The author was able to describe this phase in her life with such clarity and we somehow knew that she would conquer. 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. The only flaw I found with the book is that Waal somewhat rushes through her last couple of years and I would happily have read another 50 pages to gain more detail, but a memorable read I recommend.

He's spend money they didn't have on gifts to send to relatives there, and eventually left the family to go back. Vivid and compelling and so moving… Kit’s depiction of her parents’ dynamic is both painful and comforting to read’ Marian Keyes*Soon to be 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. I would definitely recommend the audiobook in particular, which is narrated by the author, as I feel like this enhanced the experience.Poverty, religion, race and drugs all feature, but this remains something of a love letter to the simple pleasures of childhood in the 70s.

There’s a small problem, though: for Jehovah’s Witnesses, paradise will come, but only after Armageddon, which will happen in 1975. That is another fun read if you want to learn more about the JW strange religion-that has cursed so many branches of people's families around the world. Not shallow as in the author is a shallow person, but shallow as in I wish certain stories and emotions were explored more. In gloriously vivid detail Kit De Waal gives us her story set in its very particular time and place. As a Brummie of a certain age, I am undoubtedly biased in my evaluation of this lovely memoir, redolent of a particular time and subculture (1970s Birmingham), but this book's only fault is that it finishes too soon.Born to a Caribbean father and an Irish mother, life was very tough growing up in a home where 'both her parents were waiting for paradise. 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 . Her exhausted, Irish, mother is not romanticised, rather her flaws are honestly examined, just as her father’s peacockery is not mocked, but laid bare. 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.