Kit de Waal has said reading saved her life after she came close to a serious mental health breakdown in her early 20s following a turbulent youth marked by poverty, racism and drug use, per bbc.com.
The Birmingham-born bestselling author told BBC Upload that she was “a couple of months away from a very serious breakdown” at the age of 21, after leaving home at 16 and struggling with drugs and alcohol.
De Waal, whose father moved to Britain from the Caribbean in 1956 and whose mother was an Irish immigrant, grew up in Moseley in a family she described as “very, very poor”. She said those early experiences of being an outsider later became central to her work.
“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,” she said. She also recalled the impact of a neighbour’s kindness after the family moved into a largely white neighbourhood.
After returning home and taking a job with the Crown Prosecution Service, de Waal said a solicitor noticed her yawning during a meeting and suggested reading to help with insomnia. He gave her a list of 10 novels, including War and Peace and Madame Bovary, which she bought.
Although she never cured her insomnia, de Waal said the recommendation opened up “the world of reading” and changed the direction of her life. “I can honestly say it saved my life,” she said.
Reading later led her to write. Despite initially believing she could complete a novel within months, she spent more than a decade facing rejection and developing her craft before publication.
Her breakthrough came with My Name Is Leon, which follows a young boy in the care system in 1980s Birmingham. The novel became an international bestseller, was adapted for the BBC after Sir Lenny Henry narrated its audiobook, and is now studied in schools.
De Waal said the main lesson from her career was to “write the thing you really care about”. She remains an advocate for reading in all forms, including audiobooks.
De Waal is one of Britain’s best-known contemporary authors. Her account highlights the role reading can play in mental health recovery and reflects the personal experiences of poverty, racism and family instability that inform much of her fiction.
- Featured image: Kit de Waal/Getty Images