Wednesday 9 April, 7:45pm, Southbank Centre, Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall. Free for RSL Members and Fellows. Not a Member? Join now! Public tickets can be purchased from the Southbank Centre here from £15.
Paulette’s the kind of woman who likes the future all mapped out: the wedding to Denton, the Caribbean honeymoon, the gingham quilt on the baby’s crib.
Until one morning Garfield, Denton’s friend, arrives at her door with news she just can’t take in: that Denton won’t be coming around anymore, that there won’t be time for her to say goodbye.
Somehow Garfield finds his way into her bed, if not her heart, and sooner than anyone can believe there is a baby, and suddenly giving Bird, her son, the best of everything is what gives Paulette’s life meaning.
So why is it another little boy, Nellie, who keeps Paulette awake at night? Nellie who is being raised a few streets away with no sign of a mum, with a grandfather who is obviously struggling.
Surely Paulette is the last person who should be getting tangled up in any of that? is a novel about what it means to care and to learn to live in the aftermath of loss.
Kit de Waal is the author of the novels My Name Is Leon, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, The Trick to Time, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a short story collection, Supporting Cast, and a memoir, Without Warning and Only Sometimes, which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.
She is also editor of the Common People anthology, and co-founder of the Big Book Weekend festival. My Name Is Leon was adapted as a film for BBC Two.
Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize 2019 with her internationally-bestselling novel, Girl, Woman, Other. Her 2013 novel, Mr Loverman, was a hit BBC One eight-part drama series in 2024. She has received over 80 awards, nominations and honours including the two British Book Awards.
A literary activist, she has set up several literature inclusion schemes. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University of London, an Honorary Fellow at St Annes, University of Oxford and President of the Royal Society of Literature.
Presented in collaboration with the Southbank Centre.
