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

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Kit de Waal was born in Birmingham in 1960 to an Irish mother & a Caribbean father. Throw in her mother’s (and, therefore, the children’s) conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses & it’s quite a mix. If you'd prefer not to see a GP, you may be able to make an appointment at an NHS continence service instead. Call your local hospital for details of your nearest service. Treatments for bowel incontinence Not fully accepted by either side of the family, by dint of being half, the children are aware of being treated differently to their cousins. Neither parent is accepted by the other’s community & their marriage is an imbalance between a mother who wants to be loved & a father who cannot fully commit. In all likelihood, the marriage probably wouldn’t have taken place had pregnancy not forced the issue.

There are lots of possible causes of bowel incontinence. Often it's caused by a combination of problems. They just wanted to get out, and who can blame them? De Waal got out, and doesn’t judge: she understands because she watched and listened so closely. “When the other one is out,” she writes of her parents, “they tell us stories about their life before us. They both want us as their audience, for the depository of their dreams, for their excuses, justifications, explanations.” The vast majority of the memoir is about the author’s childhood and their relationship with their parents, but though the stories changed they were all very similar, and other moments like the author’s later life were examined superficially, brushed off mentions of death in exchange for a nester ending.

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It can be very upsetting and embarrassing, but it's important to get medical advice if you have it because treatment can help. Signs and symptoms Vivid and compelling and so moving... Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic is both painful and comforting to read' Marian Keyes

Vivid and compelling and so moving… Kit’s depiction of her parents’ dynamic is both painful and comforting to read’ Marian Keyes There were several laugh out loud moments for me; one memorable one being during a conversation with a housemate about one of his previous lives, after she has remarked on the coincidence of people often seeming to have been a key figure in previous incarnations, Just published with Tinder Press, Without Warning & Only Sometimes is an engaging and beautiful journey that gives an insight into the remarkable path taken by a curious little girl to become a reader and the writer we all are familiar with today.For the O’Loughlin children, becoming a Jehovah’s Witness family involves interminable hours spent at weekly meetings, inconveniently timed to clash with Top of the Pops, at which Mandy and her siblings nearly die with boredom and fail to have their various forms of hunger sated. 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. Her experiences through these years are wonderfully captured with a poignancy and a sense of achievement. See a GP if you have difficulty controlling your bowels. Do not be embarrassed about talking to someone about it.

How could they do this? How could they semi-starve their children while hoarding treats and possessions for their own use? But it rings all too true. This memoir is an astonishingly good evocation of the dream and reality of migration to postwar Birmingham, a city that must have seemed flush with cash to anyone moving from elsewhere. It gave its migrant working class a promise of riches while delivering a life of hard work and exhaustion. From the award-winning author of MY NAME IS LEON comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted, and true. One of my recent Summer Reads, Kit de Waal's memoir, is a fascinating, intelligent, charming and affecting read. 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. An interesting insight into a childhood, which occasionally resonated with me but also detailed the challenges of growing up in a discordant marriage, with the added dual heritage dynamic.Another review, referred to Kit De Waal as a “born storyteller” & I go along with that, she could make the most mundane topic interesting. Do not try to self-diagnose the cause of your problems. Get medical help so the underlying cause can be identified and treated. More information

I enjoyed this memoir but don’t think I can give it a higher score because it felt repetitive and, at times, shallow. Not shallow as in the author is a shallow person, but shallow as in I wish certain stories and emotions were explored more. You may also have other symptoms, such as constipation, diarrhoea, farting or bloating. When to get medical advice

When to get medical advice

To be used as a sounding board rather than a person does things to you. In De Waal’s case, it made her an outstanding observer of relationships and the way no two individuals’ experiences can ever map neatly on to each other’s. In other words, a true writer. The cliche that unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way was never truer in her case. The world didn’t end in 1975, after all, but by then Mandy O’Loughlin had found a way to survive.