Kit de Waal on Life's Modest Dreams and the Magic of the Plot
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about
[0:09]storytelling, reinvention, and life itself because when you talk about books, you're
[0:13]really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy.
[0:27]If you like books about betrayal, resilience, and all of that, you are going to love
[0:32]Kit de Waals' Sweet Pea a novel.
[0:35]I really enjoyed speaking to Kit about the book.
[0:38]Kit de Waal is the author of my name is Leon, which was shortlisted for the Costa First
[0:44]Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, The Trick to Time, which
[0:49]was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a short story collection supporting
[0:53]cast and a memoir without warning, and only sometimes she lives in the UK.
[0:58]Welcome, Kit.
[0:59]Thank you so much for coming on to talk about Sweet Pea and Novel Congratulations.
[1:04]Thank you so much and thank you so much for inviting me.
[1:07]It's really great to see you and speak to the readers.
[1:10]Well, I really loved this beautiful book, really.
[1:14]I mean, I was so, at the end of it, I was like, how many times have I been on the bus with
[1:20]these guys?
[1:21]I just feel like I've been all over going through life events and birthdays.
[1:26]By the end of it, when Paulette was 48, I was like 48 at this point, I felt like she was
[1:31]so much older.
[1:32]I'm older than Paulette had that happen.
[1:35]Yeah, it's such a life and the way I wanted it to be is that you don't notice because
[1:43]there's big gaps where I don't say anything that she's doing.
[1:46]I'm not saying what she's doing because, like, for all of us, you can lose five
[1:51]years and go, what happened to those five years because you're just doing your regular
[1:57]life, no big events, which is normally great, no big events.
[2:01]So I wanted to have that sense of a whole life.
[2:05]Well, why don't you tell us in areas what Sweet Pea is really about?
[2:09]Sure.
[2:10]Sweet Pea is really Paulette's story.
[2:13]Paulette starts this book, she's 29.
[2:17]She wants the normal, reasonable, humble things that everybody wants.
[2:22]She wants to be loved.
[2:24]She wants a house, a nice house.
[2:26]She doesn't mind if she doesn't own it, just as long as she rents it.
[2:29]Nice house, nice neighbors.
[2:31]She wants a baby.
[2:33]She wants a man that older will do.
[2:36]She doesn't even want to get married first necessarily.
[2:38]Just like, I just want to be loved.
[2:40]I want to love.
[2:41]I want nice neighbors.
[2:42]I want to cook dinner.
[2:44]It's really modest to her, her dreams, she's not after riches and designer stuff.
[2:49]She just wants a normal thing.
[2:52]And she's got the guy.
[2:54]She has got the guy.
[2:56]And we meet her in this mode of I'm going to have another way of that peach, got a dress,
[3:02]wedding dress.
[3:03]I'm going to have that baby creative and she's really planning it out.
[3:07]The book is really about how when that doesn't happen for her, how she manages and
[3:16]doesn't manage her life, different people coming to her life, people very unexpected
[3:22]people, people she should never talk to are in her life.
[3:26]And it's really a testimony to her personality and her kindness that she incorporates
[3:33]the weirdest people into her life and loves them.
[3:36]But without cost, it's difficult for her things happen that really, really test her goodness.
[3:44]And she doesn't always make great choices in life.
[3:48]And very much, poor let is like everyone knows a poor let, at least one poor let.
[3:55]She's the sort of person that if you have a party, even if it's not her party, she's
[4:01]in the kitchen.
[4:03]She's in the kitchen scraping plate.
[4:05]She's in the kitchen making sure that the host has got a drink.
[4:08]She's on the back wall, she's in the garden, she needs a job.
[4:15]She would never be the centre of attention and yet here she is, the centre of attention
[4:20]in a book.
[4:21]And who is the pilot that you know in your life?
[4:24]I know quite a few poor let's.
[4:26]So my father came to England from the Caribbean in 1956 and he came at a time when there
[4:33]were a lot of people coming over.
[4:36]So when I was born in 1960 and so in the sort of 60s, you would meet people that were
[4:43]from the West Indies.
[4:44]I was born in England, but you would meet people like poor let who had very, very traditional
[4:51]Christian background and had come to England.
[4:55]And they came for a better life, like lots of immigrants do.
[4:58]They came to work hard to make.
[5:00]life and I met a lot of Paulettes that is very quiet, industrious, hard-working women who
[5:10]were trying their best to have a better life.
[5:13]And I saw that you wrote a memoir without warning in only some times, which I'm so mad
[5:17]I didn't have time to go back and read, but it sounds like you had quite the childhood
[5:21]of yourself.
[5:22]I really did have quite the childhoods, so it was an unusual childhood in my father
[5:27]came in 1956, six-foot-six black, very black-skinned.
[5:32]He came for a few years, he only came for like two years, three years, makes somebody go
[5:36]back to the West Indies, never intended to stay.
[5:39]He meets an Irish immigrant who came over, she did come to stay, and the Chinese hotel
[5:47]was she.
[5:48]She was five foot two, oh my gosh, I'm white and Irish, and they met because in those days
[5:55]in England you would regularly have in the fifties and sixties, signs in the windows
[6:01]of boarding houses that said no blacks, no dogs, no Irish.
[6:06]That was a very, very common thing.
[6:08]So black people, Caribbean people, and Irish people ended up in the same boarding house
[6:15]very often because if they took a black, they would take an Irish and would probably take
[6:19]a dog.
[6:20]So you ended up with these boarding houses of black people and Irish people, and of course
[6:25]children are born, children are born inevitably.
[6:29]And my mother was an Irish Catholic, no birth control.
[6:34]So my dad comes over for two years, and in year one has one, year two has another, and
[6:40]that goes on for five years, what child every year.
[6:44]And my mother then meet my number, where are you?
[6:46]I'm number two, okay, I'm number two.
[6:49]And my mother then became a Jehovah's Witness, which is a very fond of entities Christian,
[6:54]very, very strict cult, I think it's a cult.
[6:59]And she also, she was bipolar, my mother was bipolar, we would never refuse that terminology
[7:03]then.
[7:04]We called my mom crazy.
[7:06]That's what just we didn't know any of the terminology I'd bipolar or manic depressive
[7:12]and we just think she's strange.
[7:14]And my father never let go of his desire to go home to the West Indies, so he never invested
[7:19]in his children.
[7:20]He never invested in England, he was always, I'm going back, I'm going back, I'm going
[7:25]back.
[7:26]And my mother was, I'm going to paradise, I'm going to paradise, I'm going to paradise.
[7:30]And then these five children are, you know, they're not really being parented very well
[7:38]at all.
[7:39]But we loved each other and we were very, very, very poor, very poor.
[7:46]We laughed every day, we laughed at my parents, not with my parents.
[7:50]We had a bizarre childhood.
[7:53]It was good in that we had each other, that we had laughter, we were loved in our own way.
[8:00]And it was very bad in that we were poor, we were badly fed, we had this very pressing
[8:05]religion.
[8:06]But it was, it was interesting.
[8:09]That's for sure.
[8:10]Oh my gosh.
[8:12]It's so interesting having that context for how this particular narrative would unfold
[8:19]because really palette once, what it sounds like you had, I mean, she wants to be included
[8:26]in a family so much so that she's like basically hanging off her porch to meet her
[8:30]neighbor.
[8:31]Right.
[8:32]I mean, she's glombing on to any relationship, she can and she is so giving, right?
[8:37]Because this nurse who just is like night and day just give, give, give and takes a little
[8:43]from herself and yet she just can't seem to get the very basic thing that she wanted so
[8:49]much.
[8:50]Absolutely.
[8:51]She deserves it.
[8:52]I mean, everybody deserves it, everyone deserves those, those basic things home family,
[8:58]everyone deserves it.
[8:59]For poor let, it's her raise on debt, it's the reason she's alive, I just want those
[9:05]little things.
[9:06]Well, I thought the career, I don't want the, you know what, I didn't want to car.
[9:10]I just want the home and she came from a loving home with her grandmother, but it was
[9:17]cut short when she came to England and she wants to be long and every time she tries to
[9:23]get it, I'm not there.
[9:25]I don't know, no, not there and then not there and all, she does have a baby, not for
[9:33]night in the way she expected, but she does have a baby and even that baby doesn't turn
[9:38]out to give her the very thing that she craved so much and another child that she comes
[9:44]across, dog, and she doesn't want it from that child, she wants it from her son and nevertheless
[9:52]this child is adores her, she adores him, but it isn't in many ways.
[10:00]a relationship that takes from her as well as keeps her.
[10:04]Well, it's the whole notion of found family
[10:06]and what does that give you and also forgiveness
[10:10]because it's such an unlikely love
[10:13]that comes from that relationship.
[10:15]Absolutely.
[10:16]And it's also testimony to Paulette's kindness
[10:19]because so many people, me included,
[10:22]I don't think I would have been that kind
[10:25]and forgiving to these straight,
[10:27]the not just strangers,
[10:28]I mean, they're beyond pay strangers.
[10:30]These are people that I shouldn't
[10:32]right.
[10:33]I would reason not to like these people.
[10:36]And yet she does and she gives and gives.
[10:39]I mean, she has her moments where she can tell them.
[10:43]Actually, you know what, that you've gone far, you know?
[10:46]But I think kindness and goodness are really
[10:51]out of fashion words, they're really out of fashion.
[10:54]They're very underestimated.
[10:56]The value of a kind word,
[10:58]the value of a kind smile to stranger.
[11:03]I was just telling someone the other day,
[11:05]I was walking down the road.
[11:06]I was really tired.
[11:08]I've got a bit of a cold.
[11:09]I had lots of work to do.
[11:11]I was late to collect something.
[11:12]I'm rushing down the road and this woman
[11:14]was walking towards me and she said,
[11:16]I love your coat.
[11:17]And you know, it changed everything.
[11:20]Just a smile, I love your coat.
[11:22]And I thought, oh, I do like this coat.
[11:23]You know, it just stops you in your tracks,
[11:26]brings you out of that misery place.
[11:28]A kind word from a total stranger,
[11:32]the kindness of strangers is so underestimated
[11:36]how we can change a day for someone with a nice word.
[11:40]We can have a day changed.
[11:43]And that's Paulette, she's full of that energy.
[11:47]She's full of that vibe.
[11:49]She's always thinking, what can I do?
[11:51]How can I help?
[11:52]So interesting, I actually learned this from my husband.
[11:55]You think I would learn this as a kid.
[11:57]But when I met him, he's so outgoing
[11:59]that he would talk to anyone and be like, great sneakers
[12:03]or, oh my gosh, like you look at me, you know,
[12:05]excellent or cool glasses.
[12:06]And I'm like, stop talking all these straight.
[12:08]Like you can't just talk to him.
[12:09]He's like, yes, I can.
[12:10]He's like, watch how it changes their day.
[12:12]Watch how it makes them feel.
[12:14]And I watched for years.
[12:16]And now I do that myself.
[12:17]And it's not something that would have come naturally
[12:21]because I feel like, oh, no boundaries and whatever.
[12:23]But it makes everybody so much happier.
[12:26]Absolutely.
[12:27]And it's cool.
[12:29]It costs you nothing.
[12:30]Yeah.
[12:30]Because sometimes you are walking down the road
[12:34]and you see someone, you think, oh gosh, like those shoes.
[12:36]Say it, don't think it.
[12:38]Say it, maybe that small gesture, the woman at the checkout
[12:42]in the grocery store, I like your nail varnish.
[12:48]If you mean, I mean, the point is you have to mean it.
[12:50]No, no, no.
[12:51]You have to notice it.
[12:53]And you have to mean it.
[12:54]You're not saying it for effect.
[12:55]You're saying it because you're in the moment,
[12:58]you're noticing the moment.
[12:59]You haven't got your head full of,
[13:00]I've got to go home and I've got to do this,
[13:02]and I've got to do that.
[13:03]But just be there.
[13:04]And that's the source of person pull it.
[13:06]She would never blow her own trumpet, never, never, never.
[13:10]But she's full of goodness and that kind of energy.
[13:14]I feel like she's always trying so hard
[13:17]to overcome the disappointments that she's faced.
[13:19]I feel like she has this relationship with magazines.
[13:22]And she's always just like trying to get like,
[13:24]what can I read?
[13:25]What tips do I have from this?
[13:27]Like where can I get inspiration from?
[13:29]And she is just searching, searching, searching for something
[13:33]external to change what is sort of fundamentally
[13:36]unchangeable in a way with her circumstances.
[13:39]And but she doesn't give up that hope.
[13:41]No, absolutely.
[13:43]And the magazines really are for pull-out.
[13:46]And we've all done it.
[13:47]I've looked at a magazine and it says yellow
[13:51]is the new color for autumn.
[13:52]I've got to get a yellow jump.
[13:53]I'm going to get, doesn't matter if it doesn't suit me.
[13:55]I just want, I want that sort of bit of injection
[13:58]of energy about, and I want to be hip,
[14:00]and I want to be trendy, and I don't want to look 66,
[14:03]and whatever it is.
[14:05]And it'll be, you know, make, you know,
[14:07]make chicken five different ways.
[14:09]I'm right, I'm going to, and you get the magazine.
[14:12]Someone had, somehow you think it's going to change your life.
[14:16]Your life's going to be different now.
[14:17]I've bought the magazine, it's $10.
[14:19]I bought the magazine, I'm going to read the magazine,
[14:21]and I will be that person.
[14:24]And first of all, we don't see what they have to do
[14:28]to make the people look like that, which is, you know,
[14:31]it isn't just-
[14:32]Or the chicken, by the way.
[14:33]Or the chicken.
[14:35]Absolutely.
[14:36]And, you know, there's an actual job for his food.
[14:39]For telling.
[14:40]Yes, food's telling, yeah.
[14:42]And then you wonder why your chicken five way looks,
[14:46]looks, looks one way, it looks one way.
[14:49]And that's Paulette, you know, she's, she's, oh, you know,
[14:53]where am I going to find like you say this inspiration?
[14:56]How can I change my life?
[14:57]How can things be better?
[14:59]I'll get the magazine off.
[15:00]do the thing and then my life will change for a pilot. But I actually like love her. I just
[15:06]wanted to like give her a hug at the end and oh my gosh anyway. And she came from a short story.
[15:11]Is that right? I saw in your acknowledgements. She came from she came from actually another novel.
[15:17]So I wrote a novel and she was a bee character. The novel didn't work. It wasn't working. She was,
[15:25]for somebody so shy and in the background. She was very present in this novel. And she was supposed
[15:32]to be a bee character. And she didn't work as a bee character. She had to have her own space. She had
[15:38]to have her own time. So I abandoned that novel. I managed to save about 20,000 words and then I
[15:46]built it into this one. Which was a dream. I mean it was easy. I knew her. I knew what was going to
[15:52]to happen. I knew Nellie. I knew shirt and tie. And it was just like yeah, here we go. This is what
[15:58]I should have been writing all along. The holidays are coming up and I am getting ready to host
[16:09]which means I turned to a fair, per usual, to find the things to freshen up my home for guests.
[16:16]I found the most adorable throw pillows for our outside Nellie and got 12 different pillows,
[16:23]which I've mixed and matched and put out to make my whole backyard seem even more special.
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[16:56]to shop all things home. That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r dot com. And so what is the act of writing?
[17:14]Give you. How does it make you feel? What do you get from it?
[17:18]I am one hundred and ten percent in the story. So for me, when I'm writing a story,
[17:26]I think I'm recording what happened. I don't feel like I'm making it up. So I feel like,
[17:32]oh right, she did that. It's like watching, you know, like if you had to watch Die Hard,
[17:38]and someone was sitting next to you and they can't see the screen. And I said, right, this is happening,
[17:42]and this is happening, and this is happening, and he wants to do that. That's how it feels to me.
[17:46]Like, I've seen it somewhere. And so for me, it's, I get to live this other life. I get to be,
[17:54]I mean, when I'm writing Paulette, because she's got a slight, she doesn't want a West Indian
[17:59]accent anymore, but she has got West Indian phraseology and some sort of addiction that we're
[18:08]questioning. And so when I'm writing her, I would be talking to myself,
[18:16]because I want to get it right, or sometimes if she's going to look at someone and then look
[18:20]away, I'm sitting at my computer going. And if I'm in public, I'm doing that thing, and people
[18:26]just think I'm crazy, because I have to act it out. I have to be there genuinely be in the story.
[18:35]There are moments that every author was holding the same thing where you cry, because it
[18:42]has to affect you. I think it was Robert Frost that said, notice in the read, in the writer,
[18:48]notice in the reader. And it's absolutely true. You have to be moved. You have to believe it's
[18:55]so true and so real that it affects you and it should affect you viscerally. So for me,
[19:03]I get this whole other life, many lives in fact. That's amazing. When did you realize you could do
[19:11]that? Like how old are you? What happened? I was probably, I didn't realize I could do it. I mean,
[19:17]God, no, I think I wanted to write from the time I was about 45, I think. I never thought of it
[19:24]before that. I had a little boy, I adopted a little boy who's very ill, very, very ill, and I spent
[19:28]a lot of time in hospital with him, just sitting on the chair and he was asleep.
[19:35]And I'm a great reader. I mean, read hundreds and hundreds of books. So I thought, do you know what?
[19:40]I'm writable. You can't be that hard. And it'll be really great. And I'll send it to Penguin. I don't
[19:46]only ever heard of Penguin. And it'll be great. I'll write it in about six months. It'll get published.
[19:51]I knew nothing about the publishing industry. I've never heard of an editor. I've never heard of an
[19:56]agent. So I wrote this book. That was...
[20:00]absolute rubbish. It was so bad. And I found it really amazing that first of all I've
[20:10]read all these books, so I know what good writing is. Secondly, I've got this vision
[20:15]of this seed, but I haven't got the vocabulary and I haven't got the skills. Why can I
[20:20]only say it was a sunny day? I don't know the other way is to say it was a sunny day.
[20:25]And from the time that I discovered how bad I was, then I wanted to write, then I thought,
[20:33]oh my god, I'm going to go back. I'm going to read all the books I took for granted.
[20:37]And I'm going to see how they did it. Why did I cry on page 73? Why did I laugh on page
[20:44]179? And I deconstructured my favorite books. And it took me 10 years, at least 10 years
[20:52]of writing and being rubbish, writing, getting little less rubbish, and on and on and on.
[21:01]Until I thought, okay, I might be half as good as I wanted to be. I mean, that was a big
[21:10]revelation to me. And a good dose of humility as well. It was good. I was cocky. I was,
[21:17]yeah, I'm going to write a book and get it published. No, you're not. You're going to pay
[21:20]your dues. You're going to learn the craft as you should, as everyone has to, if they're going
[21:25]to be a good writer. So it was good for me. I am now very humble. I am humbled by the experience.
[21:32]With this humility, you go on to write multiple books. What is it now that's on your to-do list?
[21:38]What are you trying to do next? What I'm doing next is I'm plotting a new, I'm a great
[21:45]plotter. So I plot everything about my novel side plot. And I'm in the process, plotting for me
[21:51]is like falling in love. It's, it's like magical. And I'm going to be with my plot. I'm going to
[21:57]be with my plot. And it's like a secret love affair. And I literally have certain music that I play
[22:07]when I'm going to talk about my plot. I mean, it really is romance. And so I'm in that magical
[22:12]moment. And just like falling in love, it's all wonderful till it isn't. And so it's all wonderful
[22:18]and it's great. And every problem is an opportunity, you know, like you need it when you fall in love.
[22:23]And everything's going to be great. It's wonderful. We'll never fall out. And then you fall out
[22:28]with your plot because you realize the plot holes. And you realize actually my character's not
[22:33]going to kill someone in this. She's just going to run away and you start finding all the problems
[22:39]in the plot, just like in a relationship. And you work through them. And there's something
[22:43]even more beautiful at the end. But I'm writing the falling in love stage where everything's
[22:49]wonderful and optimistic. And I'm also in the process of compiling and editing an anthology of
[22:57]writing by a debut writers over 50 because it's so hard to get published if you're over 50.
[23:05]Really, really difficult in every country because so often the publishing industry sees a
[23:12]debut writer as a young writer. They get, you know, 25, 30, 20 years to build a career, 20 years
[23:21]to earn the advance back, 20 years to do the PR necessary to break into publishing. And they don't
[23:28]think about that the same when it's an older writer over 50 or over 60. So I'm putting together an
[23:35]anthology of 15 very well-known famous writers over 50 and 15 unknown writers over 50 get published
[23:45]together in one anthology. People will buy it for the big names. They do Smith. They'll buy it for
[23:52]big, big names of people, Bernardine have a rest to etc, etc. But they will discover the unknown
[24:00]writers. And the unknown writers get published. They get seen. They will probably get picked up
[24:06]by the publishing house. I did this for class in a book called Common People, which was 15 working
[24:12]class writers that were famous, 15 unknown writers that were famous that were unknown, sorry,
[24:18]debut writers. And six or seven of them have gone on to get publishing deals. I'm really hoping
[24:25]this is going to happen for the older writer. I love that. That's amazing. Well, I can't wait to
[24:31]read that and find out your new authors. We try in our bookstore. Each shelf has like 15 authors
[24:37]and I do the same thing where we try to have really well mixed with the new for discoverability
[24:42]because it's so hard in publishing. Even with the publishing deal to be discovered and
[24:47]adopted in red, it's just a challenge. Absolutely. And you need, you know, everybody needs a help.
[24:54]Everyone needs a bit of a, I mean, again, it's I'm not doing it for kind reasons I'm doing it
[24:58]because I'm passionate, believe it.
[25:00]that this is the next frontier for inclusion and making sure that voice all voices are heard.
[25:07]I think ages are really important. And let's face it, what is 60 now is not 60, 30 years ago?
[25:15]Now, 30 years ago, it was retirement, you know, a closing down of the horizon.
[25:22]60 now is I'm going to start that new career. I'm going to do this thing.
[25:28]I'm going to leave my relationship. I'm going to form a new relationship.
[25:31]I'm going to start writing. It's an energised time, especially for women. Women, I think,
[25:38]have reclaimed this age as our own. We're not winding down and putting the roles in our hair at
[25:45]night and, you know, getting the eye like in an usdicated way is okay. But that's not mandatory now
[25:52]have the beige clothes and all the rest of it. It's a vibrant, bright, sparkly time for people.
[25:59]And I think publishing needs to catch up with that. Love that. Love that so much. Oh, my gosh,
[26:05]you have such great advice, such fabulous perspective and the writing itself. I'm sorry that you
[26:11]feel this is only half as good as you wanted, but I feel like it was it was really lovely and immersive
[26:17]and the characters, oh my gosh, so real. They taught me so much. Anyway, sweet pea, congratulations,
[26:24]kid. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the conversation.
[26:29]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone after time to read books.
[26:34]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[26:40]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.