Supporting Cast

A deeply moving collection of stories featuring characters from My Name is Leon and The Trick to TimeAs she walks out of her marriage, a woman remembers the day her husband rescued a boy from drowning.A blind man on his wedding day celebrates the pursuit of love.And a young man leaves prison with only one desire - to see his son again.Kit de Waal's characters light up the page in vivid stories of thwarted desire, love and loss. With power and precision, humanity and insight, Supporting Cast captures the extraordinary moments in our ordinary lives, and the darkness and the joy of the everyday.

“Tender and heart-breaking”

Kit de Waal has written? a book that is absolutely right for the summer of 2020 . . . This is a book you could read on a journey, on a beach, in a single sitting between dinner and bedtime. And afterwards feel more connected to the world... It's a treat for her many existing fans - but new readers can very much start here Financial Times
It's so good. Full of Kit's trademark humanity. I can feel my heart grow with every word Cathy Rentzenbrink
Stunning. What an experience, the brightest and most beautiful break in the clouds. Kit is in utter command of language and story here, and wields them like no other writer Donal Ryan
Kit has the most marvellous gift of getting to the marrow of her characters and this collection of vignettes from the lives of her characters, peripheral, and not so peripheral, is a magnificent study of humanity in all its various sorrows. Her writing is exquisite, not a word is wasted and the stories are beautiful in their simplicity and truth Liz Nugent
Written with such beauty Prima
Stories of everyday lives that will resonate and move you utterly Stylist
Superb. [The characters] blaze into richly imagined lives full of loss, love, abandonment and heartfelt hope Daily Mail
An emotionally sure-handed novel exploring harrowing terrain with deft sensitivity Sunday Times on The Trick to Time
The unforgettable story of a boy struggling to belong. Heartbreaking and uplifting - just read it Daily Mail on My Name is Leon
Devastatingly emotional. De Waal's storytelling gives us the poetry and sorrow of life itself Financial Times on The Trick to Time

Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the 60's and 70's. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was longlisted for the Women's Prize and her young adult novel Becoming Dinah is shortlisted for the Carnegie CLIP Award 2020. She also crowdfunded and edited an anthology of working class memoir, Common People, which was published in 2018. Kit was named the FutureBook Person of the Year in 2019.

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