An Awkward Age — Ben Smith

A mild night in a Yorkshire village in December 1976; Ben is expecting his mum home from a cheese & wine evening at the vicarage. Instead, the widow Barbara Brown turns up on the doorstep to tell Ben that his mum has been taken to hospital. She tries to be reassuring, but isn't convincing. Ten days later, Ben still hasn't been allowed to see his mother. His dad, as usual, has told Ben nothing, but for the first time ever Ben has been disgusted and horrified to witness his father crying. Everything he sees and hears points towards a nightmare outcome, but when, at last, on Christmas Day, his dad drives Ben to the hospital, he makes a discovery that nothing could have prepared him for. An Awkward Age looks at love and loss through the eyes of an adolescent boy trying to make his way in a world of punk and political upheaval. Set partly in Yorkshire and partly in Northern Nigeria, where Ben's dad decides to go and work, and where Ben forms some life-affirming relationships, An Awkward Age is an extremely poignant story, infused with a vein of beautifully dry humour and optimism, in which Ben Smith succinctly captures the social mores of 1970s Britain.