High Time

In High Time, eight year old Ruth Reid has a major preoccupation in her life, summed up by the question she keeps asking her mother, and which her mother never answers: 'Why don't I have a grandma or a grandad? All my friends at school do!' Why doesn't Ruth's mother answer? Partly because she thinks Ruth is too young to be told, partly because she is afraid that the answer will reopen old wounds in her heart. Ruth's mother, Susan, is a white working-class girl from Nottingham, who ran away to London with her boyfriend Courtney, a black immigrant from Jamaica, after constant rows with her parents, and after Courtney was assaulted in what the national newspapers termed the 'Nottingham Race Riots' in 1958. Author Tony Whelpton portrays realistically this story from his own home town, and describes not only the highs and lows of the story of Ruth and Courtney's parents, but also those experienced by her grandparents who don't even know she exists. There is heartache a-plenty on all sides, but a great deal of happiness too, as readers of octogenarian novelist Tony Whelpton have come to expect. Tony's many admirers will be anticipating his latest novel with great enthusiasm. If you haven't yet read any of his books, it is undoubtedly High Time you joined them!