High Time

By Tony Whelpton

“High Time, published by Tony Whelpton in 2018, is a gripping read that really made my heart ache...”
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 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 own 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 with impressive realism this story from his own home town, and describes not only the highs and lows of the story of Ruth's parents, but also those experienced by her grandparents, who don't even know of her existence. There is heartache a-plenty on all sides, but a great deal of happiness too, as readers of octogenarian novelist Tony Whelpton's works have come to expect.
High Time is a full-length novel which is a re-working of a novella named A Happy Christmas, published in 2016 but withdrawn from sale when High Time was published. High Time is well over twice the length of A Happy Christmas.