Without Warning and Only Sometimes

''Vivid and compelling and so moving... both painful and comforting to read'' Marian Keyes
**A BOOK OF THE YEAR - GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER (December 2022)**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD AND AN POST IRISH BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2022**
**AS BROADCAST ON BBC RADIO 4**

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 stickl