Without Warning & Only Sometimes

Written By Miriam Hanna

Without Warning & Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood by
Kit de Waal

Reviewed by Mimi
📕📕📕📕📕

Thank you to @headlinebooks for this copy!

Born to a Black Father from St Kitts and a white Irish mother who converted to Jehovah's Witness, Kit's life and upbringing in 1960s Birmingham is beautifully laid out and shared in this memoir.

The life she had with her siblings is so vivid and engaging to read, it felt like a real window into her upbringing and what made her into the writer and person that she is today. For anyone who loves My Name is Leon, including the recent BBC adaptation, this book is as engaging and this story is as heart wrenching.

The moments where Kit and her siblings are hungry while their father sends money back to St Kitts to build his dream home really pulled at my heartstrings. This idea of a dream life being sought at a cost to a family was really gut-wrenching. By the end of the book I felt like I knew Kit and her siblings incredibly well - it was a joy to read and something that we were delighted to discuss the memoir with Kit at the @primadonnafestival in July 2022!

Miriam Hanna

Aka Mimi. I have known Linda for a very, very long time. We grew up together and you learn very quickly that when she gets an idea in her head, you would be an idiot not to back her to see it through. When the idea of the book club came up it was another lightbulb moment where I knew this wasn't only going to be a success but really fun.


I have always been a bookworm. Remember when you were little and you went shopping with your mum or dad and they gave you a toy or something to occupy yourself with whilst you were in the trolley? I used to get books to keep me quiet. They were and are my ultimate form of escapism and more and more they are about understanding who I am as a person. Books make me cry more than films and TV Shows. I can get lost for hours. I love historic fiction, political thrillers and gritty crime novels but also biographies and memoirs of people I find interesting like sportspeople. I was fortunate to be in the Harry Potter generation and if weren't for those books I don't know what I would have. Young literature was so poor at the point. To have a book that had me and my family queuing up at midnight to buy was seriously special.

Whether you listen to audio books, read off a kindle or stick to carrying around good old fashioned hard copies (that's me!) I truly believe reading is the best way to spend some time every day.


The books I would have with me on a desert island? 📚🏝Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Akzaban, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters, The Power by Naomi Alderman, Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou, Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah and The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

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