Oh, and did I mention that she is also absolutely beautiful? She’s the only student at her school noble enough to acknowledge the humanity of the school’s hardworking Xhosa gardener, for example. Ruby is an idealized protagonist whose heart bleeds for the suffering of others. There’s a great deal of lofty language and many melodramatic moments in this novel. Some of the similes she provides are absurd. She is particularly preoccupied with the colour and style of clothes and furniture. The author appears never to have met an adjective or adverb that she didn’t like. It’s how she fleshes those bones out-her writing-that is problematic. Glass has the bare bones of a good story here. The exhibition of Julian’s work at Annabel’s gallery may not be able to take place, and Ruby’s father’s life is threatened. Meanwhile her parents are under intensified police surveillance for consorting with blacks. Ruby, to this point a popular straight-A student who has served as a school prefect, becomes a social pariah. Glass shows that racial and ethnic tensions in Johannesberg run deep, not just between blacks and whites but also between those of Anglo and Boer ancestry. When Ruby brings Johannes as her guest to the annual dance at her Anglo high school, violence breaks out.

The relationship is intense and challenging. Ruby falls for Johannes, the handsome rugby captain at a rival private school where children of the wealthy Afrikaner minority are educated. Ultimately, however, this novel does turn into a teenage love story-not quite a 70s version of Romeo and Juliet, but with echoes of that drama. In fact, Ruby is only a sort of muse to him. Ruby forms a friendship with this young man and for a while the reader suspects that the novel will be their love story. He’s been viciously attacked and slashed by thugs from his own community who are resentful of his success. Her mother, Annabel, owns an art gallery and is a champion of emerging black artists from the townships.Īs the story opens, Julian, a particularly promising young visual artist from Soweto committed to representing the hardship and endurance of his people, moves in with the Winters. David, Ruby’s father, is a lawyer known to take on cases in which the human rights of blacks have been violated. It’s the story of 17-year-old Ruby Winters and her parents, progressive anti-apartheid activists who have hosted African National Congress meetings in their luxurious home. Glass’s novel for teenaged girls takes place in 1976 Johannesburg in the time leading up to the Soweto uprising, in which black children came together to protest being instructed in Afrikaans, the language of their Dutch colonialist oppressors.

Ruby red book