The epigraph to Kit de Waal’s The Best of Everything is drawn from JM Barrie’s Peter Pan: “Try to be a little kinder than is necessary.” Good advice, surely, but difficult to follow at the best of times, let alone to apply towards those whom you hold responsible for personal tragedy. That de Waal’s protagonist returns again and again to this philosophy – sometimes in spite of quite understandable resentment and despair – is a minor miracle of empathy.
This character, Paulette, is a young St Kittitian working as an auxiliary nurse in 1970s England. She has a man whom she loves, as well as dreamy soft-focus expectations for her future – a wedding! A honeymoon! A house! – all of which come crashing down in the opening pages of this deceptively engaging and engrossing novel. Because Denton, Paulette’s evasive boyfriend, will never be coming home. In his place, his best friend finds his way into a distraught Paulette’s bed, and a baby soon follows. As does another child, a white boy from a neighbouring street who has an unexpected connection to Denton’s fate (in a clever touch, Paulette’s son ends up nicknamed Bird but in actuality it is this other boy, Nellie, who is very much the cuckoo in the nest).
Yet any hint of soap opera which such a sketch might suggest is offset by de Waal’s exceptionally controlled writing style. Indeed, her prose is practically invisible with little in the way of formal indulgences or flashy fireworks on display (something which mischievously undercuts Paulette’s page one desire to see “rockets and Catherine wheels”).
One would be forgiven for interpreting this simplicity – which is actually very hard to achieve – as meaning the novel sits more towards the commercial rather than the literary end of the spectrum. However, this would be a mistake. The craft here is undeniable, clearly visible not just in the subtle evolution of characters such as Bird and Nellie, but in how de Waal manipulates the passage of time across scenes and decades alike (admittedly some of the flashbacks to St Kitts feel a little rough-edged, but her use of forward momentum is a masterclass in showing and telling as appropriate, one from which any author could learn).
The novel further possesses a steely thematic spine as domestic tableaux are interwoven with the author’s characteristic concerns. Among the most recognisable of these are a mixture of Caribbean and Irish immigrant influences, an honest look at race relations in Britain, a commitment to working-class representation, and a knowledgeable perspective on how easily children can fall through the social safety net.
De Waal writes authoritatively on all these issues, drawing on both her own upbringing and on her professional background in the Crown Prosecution Service (here one intuits why she was so drawn to the Peter Pan quotation). Nonetheless, her incorporation of such material into The Best of Everything is always through Paulette’s eyes and, consequently, it all feels alive rather than merely didactic.
Aiding this, and further grounding the novel in its historical moment, is de Waal’s three-dimensional depiction of a Black woman’s experience of ’70s and later ’80s England, with Paulette striving to maintain a fraying link to her heritage (symbolised by memories of her grandmother) while also keeping one eye on the tenuousness of her family’s future. It is a delicate balance, one imperilled by the exhausting need to perform in non-threatening ways in order to navigate the racist landmines of white society (“Try to be a little kinder than is necessary” takes on additional and more defensive connotations in this light).
Yet while she carries more than her fair share of familial and social burdens, Paulette is neither a saint nor a saviour. She is too real for that. If anything, she possesses something of a self-destructive streak and makes bad decisions on more than one occasion, at times wallowing – often quite realistically – in despair and obsessive behaviour.
That said, the character also rallies repeatedly against these slings and arrows in a manner which makes The Best of Everything a very satisfying read. Because de Waal is too astute a writer to deliver just misery fiction; no, this is realism in the truest sense, with both disappointments and promises alike reshaping Paulette’s life in unexpected ways. The result is a carefully paced story of a woman facing a myriad of challenges in order to tenaciously carve out space for herself and her unexpected family. One is inclined to cheer her on throughout.
