Thalidomide Kid
Daryl Wainwright is the quirky youngest child of a large family of petty thieves and criminals who calls himself ‘Thalidomide Kid’.
Celia Burkett is the new girl at the local primary school, and the daughter of the deputy head at the local comprehensive where she is bound the following September. With few friends, Celia soon becomes fascinated by ‘the boy with no arms’.
The story of a blossoming romance and sexual awakening between a lonely girl and a disabled boy, and their struggle against adversity and prejudice as they pass from primary to secondary school in 1970s Cirencester. The story deals with themes and issues that are timeless.
Purchase Links
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thalidomide-Kid-Kate-Rigby/dp/1719306621 (paperback)
Read an Excerpt
Author Bio
Read an Excerpt
This excerpt is from Daryl’s point of view, looking ahead to when he goes to secondary school, and what they will teach during Sex Education about how babies are formed.
Looking ahead to the Big School was a bit like looking up to the Big Wheel from below. Wondering. Wondering if it was how people said it was. Much of the top form in the juniors was about preoccupation with the Big School. There were the tests to decide which set you would be in (As, Bs or Cs); there’d be the visit to Cirencester High in the summer term; there was the endless questioning of older siblings – Does Miss Lawson really pick on people in PE? Why do you call her BMW? Did you get homework on the first day?
The other thing was the small question of Sex Education. Daryl knew they did this up at the Big School. He knew they talked about the sperm and the egg and showed pictures of the growing baby inside the mother at all the various stages from embryo to foetus, like in Martin’s biology book, which used to belong to Vince – before he went to borstal – and before that it had belonged to Stella and Glen from the days when Ciren High had still been a secondary modern, and next it’d belong to Sherrie. It was a battered thing, now with neither spine nor cover, just each of the successive Wainwright children’s names on the flyleaf, the name above scribbled through with some rude remark next to it. But the picture of the baby at eight weeks looked a bit like him. Sort of deformed. All babies had looked like that. Like him. He’d just carried on looking like that. His arms had never grown like other babies’.
The Janes were right when they said his mum took something that made him have no arms. She’d never made any secret of it once he was old enough to understand. When you were that small inside my tum, Daryl, she’d said, patting her palm, I got very poorly. Ladies often get sick, you know, Daryl, ’specially in the mornings. Nature’s way. I was bloody throwing up like a bad un, so I goes to my doctor and he gave it me, Daryl. He says, we’ve got new tablets that’ll help you. Distaval, they’re called. That’s what they called Thalidomide. Oh good, I says. And none of ’em even knew, Daryl. None of it came out till years later, not till some clever doctor somewhere started putting two and two together and working out what we all had in common, us mums with our kids, some worse than you, Daryl. Some with no legs neither. So you be grateful for your legs, Daryl, coz there’s always some worse off than you.
He knew. He’d seen some of them because they’d done a television programme about it when he was six. He’d appeared on the programme along with other kids who drew pictures and combed their hair with their toes. Thalidomide Kid had been on telly! They’d all sat round and watched. Dad, Mum, Glen, Stella, Vince, Martin, Sherrie. “There you are, son,” his dad had said. “You’re famous.” And more help and charity money started coming in, before it started drying up again and his dad had to think of more of his ‘clever ways’ to make money because handicaps were an expensive business, he said.
But they wouldn’t do any of this in the Sex Education classes at the Big School. He knew this from Sherrie. He knew it’d all be normal stuff about the sperm and the egg joining together in sexual intercourse and about pregnancy and the baby going through all its stages for nine months – and when it was born, the slide or diagram on the teacher’s projector would be of a perfect baby, both arms and legs intact. There wouldn’t be anything about morning sickness or Thalidomide children.
Kate Rigby was born near Liverpool and now lives in the south west of England. She’s been writing for nearly forty years. She has been traditionally published, small press published and indie published.
She realized her unhip credentials were mounting so she decided to write about it. Little Guide to Unhip was first published in 2010 and has since been updated.
However she’s not completely unhip. Her punk novel, Fall Of The Flamingo Circus was published by Allison & Busby (1990) and by Villard (American hardback 1990). Skrev Press published her novels Seaview Terrace (2003) Sucka!(2004) and Break Point (2006) and other shorter work has appeared in Skrev’s magazines.
Thalidomide Kid was published by Bewrite Books (2007).
Her novel Savage To Savvy was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Quarter-Finalist in 2012.
She has had other short stories published and shortlisted including Hard Workers and Headboards, first published in The Diva Book of Short Stories, in an erotic anthology published by Pfoxmoor Publishing and more recently in an anthology of Awkward Sexcapades by Beating Windward Press.
She also received a Southern Arts bursary for her novel Where A Shadow Played (now re-Kindled as Did You Whisper Back?).
She has re-Kindled her backlist and is gradually getting her titles (back) into paperback
More information can be found at her website:
Or her blog:
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Many thanks for having me and my book on your blog today :)
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for having me and my book on your blog :)
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for having me and my book on your blog :)
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome! Good luck with the book!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kathleen!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kathleen!
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome Kate!
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