It’s been months since I cried over a book, and short stories rarely do that to me. But Kit de Waal’s Supporting Cast made me tear up a bit on a bright Saturday afternoon.
As the whole world is running around flaunting the idea of being the "main character" with the Pinterest-style life, glorious cafes and extravagant nightlife, there are still many who feel like the supporting cast in others’ stories. And Kit de Waal has brought their stories to life with such precision. Their losses of all kinds - time, age, love, lovers, children, sanity, legs - that form their imperfect lives are staged in a voice that is empathetic and truthful. That’s the mastery these stories needed and got.
Before starting the short story collection I didn’t know that these were the characters in the background of her earlier works. But it didn’t matter as I went from one story to another and found each character becoming a whole, with their nuances, flaws and introspection. Each story stood out as a complete piece, which was fascinating.
It’s a book that talks about a woman who, on her divorce day, remembers her husband rescuing a boy during their honeymoon; a mother who says goodbye to her newly-wed son and starts thinking about how the bride never thanked the mother who loved him first - and then, in turn, realises that she never thanked her adopted son’s mother. It’s a book about the blind man who passes you by in a crowded street, and what he is still grateful for. It’s a story of an already grieving woman trying to form stories to make her dying father less uncomfortable.
These stories delve into deep human emotions and inner conflicts, while keeping the plot poignant. Some of the stories break what some would call the rules or conventions of short fiction, but even in breaking them there seems to be a purpose, and that is an achievement. Overall, Kit de Waal has done a wonderful job in giving the supporting cast the highlighted stories they deserve. She has given them the closure they might not have received in previous books, where they were only a part of the conversation but not the whole conversation.
Now, which one of these stories made me tear up, or was it my unbalanced hormones? You’ll have to read this book yourself to figure it out, because I’m also just another supporting cast in your story talking about a book I enjoyed.
Mithila Dutta Roy is a reader and writer with a keen interest in literary fiction and stories that explore human experience. She is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester and is currently working on her first novel. She is passionate about storytelling and hopes to contribute her own voice to contemporary literature.
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