International bestselling author Kit de Waal has told the BBC how a chance conversation changed her life after she left home at 16, struggled with drugs and found herself on the brink of a serious mental breakdown. The Birmingham-born writer said she was "a couple of months away from a very serious breakdown" before a solicitor's reading recommendation changed the course of her life. Speaking to BBC Upload, she said: "I found the world of reading, the world of imagination.
Born in Birmingham to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father, de Waal grew up in Moseley at a time when mixed-race families were rare. "My father came over from the Caribbean in 1956 and my mother is an Irish immigrant," she said. The family lived on the edge of a predominantly middle-class area, but de Waal said her childhood was marked by poverty.
"We were very, very poor. I was brought up in poverty, there's no other way about it." She said those experiences later became central to her writing. "What I learnt from it was difference, what it's like to be an outsider, what it's like to be poor, hungry, lost, not fit in, the damage that poverty does, the damage that racism does to children." Yet she also remembers acts of kindness.
After her family moved into a largely white neighbourhood, one neighbour invited the children into their home to see their pet tortoise. "I learnt from that the power of kindness and the profound effect it has when other people aren't being kind." When she was six, her mother became a Jehovah's Witness. De Waal left home at 16 after deciding she no longer wanted to follow the faith.
"I took a lot of drugs, drank a lot, did everything you can imagine." The deaths of friends from heroin overdoses forced her to confront where her life was heading. By the age of 21, she said her mental health had deteriorated badly. "I would say a couple of months away from a very serious breakdown." After returning home and finding work with the Crown Prosecution Service, an off-hand comment from a solicitor would prove life-changing.
Seeing her yawn during a meeting, he suggested reading to help with her insomnia. At the time, de Waal said she disliked books and had never developed a reading habit. The solicitor gave her a list of 10 novels, including War and Peace and Madame Bovary.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
