'Vivid and compelling and so moving... Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic is both painful and comforting to read' Marian KeyesFrom the award-winning author of MY NAME IS LEON comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted, and true.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 sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.WITHOUT WARNING AND ONLY SOMETIMES is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

本作の魅力は、一九六〇年代のバーミンガムで、相反する両親の価値観に翻弄される家族の姿を鮮烈に描いた点にあります。終末を信じる母の禁欲と、浪費を厭わぬ父の享楽。この極端な二元論の中で、飢えと宗教的恐怖に耐え忍ぶ子供たちの姿は、読む者の胸を激しく打ちます。対立する文化の狭間で、著者がいかにして自己を確立していったのか、その克明な記憶の再構成は実に見事です。 聖書以外に本がない家で育った少女が、読書の喜びを知り作家へと飛躍する過程は、知的な興奮に満ちた言葉への賛歌です。過酷な現実を生き抜くための盾として物語を見出す姿は、文学の持つ本質的な救済の力を再認識させてくれます。静謐な絶望から希望を紡ぎ出す、強靭で美しい筆致に圧倒されること間違いありません。