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

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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. But there is hilarity, and perceptiveness, great love and a cast of characters who will enchant, infuriate, frighten and delight you. Here is a quick description and cover image of book Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood written by Kit de Waal which was published in January 1, 2022. There was no Christian charity anywhere unless one takes into account the Jehovah's Witnesses; the religious organization the mother and children joined towards the beginning of the book.

One of my recent Summer Reads, Kit de Waal's memoir, is a fascinating, intelligent, charming and affecting read.She grew up in 1960s Moseley, that unusual bohemian enclave of Brum where poor kids and posh kids played together and De Waal’s parents, “a little woman from Wexford” and a bus driver from St Kitts, raised five children without ever really growing up themselves. Sheila then flies to Florida to visit Auntie Mary, armed with a case of “Irish food, Ovaltine and Polo mints”. 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. Particularly, when I've heard that there were families at the time who sold everything, didn't pursue higher education, etc.

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 .Kit takes you on a thrilling ride traversing her past filled with humour, faith, joy and dysfunction.