What do you think?
Rate this book
Time to Go Back
A rebellious teen-ager goes back in time to Liverpool during World War II and views her own mother's adolescence and her aunt's tragic romance.
134 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1972
96 people want to read
About the author
Mabel Esther Allan
230 books32 followersA prolific British children's author, who also wrote under the pen-names Jean Estoril, Priscilla Hagon, Anne Pilgrim, and Kathleen M. Pearcey, Mabel Esther Allan is particularly known for her school and ballet stories.
Born in 1915 at Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula, Allan knew from an early age that she wanted to be an author, and published her first short stories in the 1930s. Her writing career was interrupted by World War II, during which time she served in the Women's Land Army and taught school in Liverpool, but the 1948 publication of The Glen Castle Mystery saw it begin to take off in earnest. Influenced by Scottish educator A.S. Neill, Allan held progressive views about education, views that often found their way into her books, particularly her school stories. She was interested in folk dance and ballet - another common subject in her work - and was a frequent traveler. She died in 1998.
Born in 1915 at Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula, Allan knew from an early age that she wanted to be an author, and published her first short stories in the 1930s. Her writing career was interrupted by World War II, during which time she served in the Women's Land Army and taught school in Liverpool, but the 1948 publication of The Glen Castle Mystery saw it begin to take off in earnest. Influenced by Scottish educator A.S. Neill, Allan held progressive views about education, views that often found their way into her books, particularly her school stories. She was interested in folk dance and ballet - another common subject in her work - and was a frequent traveler. She died in 1998.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 13, 2023
Sarah Farrant has never taken much interest in her family’s past, until she discovers a volume of poetry by Larke, her mother’s older sister, who was killed in a bombing raid on Liverpool in 1941. She becomes fascinated by Larke’s poems, and by the story of her romance with David, the handsome pilot who died not long after Larke did. When Sarah and her mother go to stay with Sarah’s grandmother in Wallasey, just across the river from Liverpool, strange things begin to happen. Sarah finds herself slipping back in time and meeting her grandmother, her mother, and her aunt Larke in 1941. An added complication is the boy called Hilary, who Sarah is very attracted to. Her time in the past always ends when she returns to her grandmother’s house, but Sarah finds herself longing to go back, and see more of her family, and of Hilary.
This is a fascinating time slip story, with wonderful, vivid, and fearful descriptions of wartime Wallasey and Liverpool, Mabel Esther Allan of course lived these experiences herself and brings them vividly to life.
This is a fascinating time slip story, with wonderful, vivid, and fearful descriptions of wartime Wallasey and Liverpool, Mabel Esther Allan of course lived these experiences herself and brings them vividly to life.
January 31, 2009
In grade 7, I was forced to choose a book to do an oral report about. Ugh! I found this in the local library and absolutely loved it. My first full length book, and it was a hit. I learned to love to read. I learned to love time travel. I learned that school can be enjoyable.
I don't remember the full plot, so I plan to buy this book and read it again. But the main character goes back to wartime England and falls in love. I remember the drama of the bombings and feeling like I was there as it was so well written.
I don't remember the full plot, so I plan to buy this book and read it again. But the main character goes back to wartime England and falls in love. I remember the drama of the bombings and feeling like I was there as it was so well written.
October 14, 2021
A YA book that is a bit different in a number of ways...First, it's a novella, at only 134 pages. Second, there's not a whole spun out plot. The main character travels back in time to WWII on 2 consecutive nights in March, then on a third day two months later. There's not much development, no problem to be solved.
There's a bit of a tacked on background where, in the beginning, she had fallen in with a group of troublemakers, and at the end she disassociates with them and makes new friends. But there's not much to this and it's clearly meant to frame the story to appear more conventional, as is the nominal friendship between Sarah and Hilary.
But it's obvious to me that the author's aim in writing this was to lay down her recollections of the Liverpool bombings of 1941 (and she says as much in a preface). And this is done astoundingly well. Of course it's realistic, she was there. Perhaps she kept a diary at the time, and that's why the details are so well preserved. It very much made me feel like I was there.
I am quite interested in the experience of British citizens during the war, so this book was interesting to me. I'm also very interested in the British experience of the 1970s, and this was written in 1972, so I was hoping for a little bit more of a contrast between the life of a teenager in the 70s and one in the 40s than was given. If accurate, though, teenagers thirty years later seemed to be fairly ignorant of the common aspects of life during the war (rationing, gas masks, no transistor radios) that their parents and grandparents lived with.
This is no sweeping drama, merely a slice of life. It is a well done little book.
There's a bit of a tacked on background where, in the beginning, she had fallen in with a group of troublemakers, and at the end she disassociates with them and makes new friends. But there's not much to this and it's clearly meant to frame the story to appear more conventional, as is the nominal friendship between Sarah and Hilary.
But it's obvious to me that the author's aim in writing this was to lay down her recollections of the Liverpool bombings of 1941 (and she says as much in a preface). And this is done astoundingly well. Of course it's realistic, she was there. Perhaps she kept a diary at the time, and that's why the details are so well preserved. It very much made me feel like I was there.
I am quite interested in the experience of British citizens during the war, so this book was interesting to me. I'm also very interested in the British experience of the 1970s, and this was written in 1972, so I was hoping for a little bit more of a contrast between the life of a teenager in the 70s and one in the 40s than was given. If accurate, though, teenagers thirty years later seemed to be fairly ignorant of the common aspects of life during the war (rationing, gas masks, no transistor radios) that their parents and grandparents lived with.
This is no sweeping drama, merely a slice of life. It is a well done little book.
October 13, 2011
I haven’t read a time travel story for a while, so I was really looking forward to reading Time to Go Back. Londoner Sarah Farrant, 16, is home recuperating from pneumonia after spending a night in jail, arrested in Trafalgar Square for demonstrating against what I assume is the Vietnam war.
Bored with staying home, she wanders into the family’s junk room and discovers a book of poetry written by her mother’s older sister, Larke Ellesmore. There were some love poems in the book, but also some poems about the destruction caused by World War II. Entranced, Sarah wants to know more about this long-ago-would-have-been aunt who died in the war, yet seems to understand exactly how Sarah feels. And Sarah gets her chance when her mother takes her to see her grandmother in Wallasey, the town where she and Larke had grown up, across the Mersey River from Liverpool.
On the evening of March 11th, while walking home to her grandmother's, Sarah suddenly finds herself back in 1941, where she meets a young man named Hilary who warns her to get to safety before the German bombers arrive. Sarah is stunned to discover her grandmother’s house is all boarded up and looking abandoned, but as soon as she puts her key in the lock, she is returned to the present.
Sarah finds herself inexplicably returning to the past a number to times between March 1941 and May 1941, dates that are crucial to the story. She is able to meet and get to know not only Larke, but also her 14 year old mother, Clem, and her much younger grandmother trying to cope with the war and two headstrong daughters while he husband is away at war. Sarah also finds herself very attracted to Hilary, a real dilemma since this young Hilary exists only in the past.
But Allan manages to pull this coming of age story together, even if it is in avery predictable ending.
Allan very nicely captures the flavor of the early 1970s in Time to Go Back, when young people involved in the peace movement were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. But she also shows, through Sarah's friends, that many were not a committed to peace as much as they were to simply venting their youthful rebellious feelings and causing a scene.
Her depictions of the bombing of Liverpool and Wallasey are really very vivid, since they are also autobiographical. The destruction, the loss, the struggle to cope that faced people day after day are all very realistically portrayed by Allan.
And yet, despite the good points, this novel is a bit weak. I think it is the predictability that is the culprit, since Allan was a fine and very prolific writer. I did like her method for effecting time travel – one minute Sarah was in the present, the next in the past – that simple. But, sadly, despite witnessing the devastating power of war first hand, Sarah’s well meaning activism seems to get lost and I found that very disappointing.
Oh well, Time to Go Back is still worth a read, but I would only give it a weakish recommendation. Which I hate to do because of the poems.
The poems that first caught Sarah’s attention are scattered throughout the novel and, in the novel, they are attributed to her aunt, Larke. In fact, these are poems written by the author herself during the war. And they are quite lovely. Consider this poem about the night of March 12/13, 1941 when Allan witnessed the first heavy bombing of Wallasey:
I saw a broken town beside the grey March sea,
Spray flung in the air and no larks singing,
And houses lurching, twisted, where the chestnut trees
Stood ripped and stark; the fierce wind bringing
The choking dust in clouds along deserted streets,
Shaking the gaping rooms, the jagged raw white stone.
Seeking for what in this quiet, stricken town? It beats
About each fallen wall, each beam, leaving no livid,
Aching place alone.
This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up
This book was purchased for my personal library
Bored with staying home, she wanders into the family’s junk room and discovers a book of poetry written by her mother’s older sister, Larke Ellesmore. There were some love poems in the book, but also some poems about the destruction caused by World War II. Entranced, Sarah wants to know more about this long-ago-would-have-been aunt who died in the war, yet seems to understand exactly how Sarah feels. And Sarah gets her chance when her mother takes her to see her grandmother in Wallasey, the town where she and Larke had grown up, across the Mersey River from Liverpool.
On the evening of March 11th, while walking home to her grandmother's, Sarah suddenly finds herself back in 1941, where she meets a young man named Hilary who warns her to get to safety before the German bombers arrive. Sarah is stunned to discover her grandmother’s house is all boarded up and looking abandoned, but as soon as she puts her key in the lock, she is returned to the present.
Sarah finds herself inexplicably returning to the past a number to times between March 1941 and May 1941, dates that are crucial to the story. She is able to meet and get to know not only Larke, but also her 14 year old mother, Clem, and her much younger grandmother trying to cope with the war and two headstrong daughters while he husband is away at war. Sarah also finds herself very attracted to Hilary, a real dilemma since this young Hilary exists only in the past.
But Allan manages to pull this coming of age story together, even if it is in avery predictable ending.
Allan very nicely captures the flavor of the early 1970s in Time to Go Back, when young people involved in the peace movement were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. But she also shows, through Sarah's friends, that many were not a committed to peace as much as they were to simply venting their youthful rebellious feelings and causing a scene.
Her depictions of the bombing of Liverpool and Wallasey are really very vivid, since they are also autobiographical. The destruction, the loss, the struggle to cope that faced people day after day are all very realistically portrayed by Allan.
And yet, despite the good points, this novel is a bit weak. I think it is the predictability that is the culprit, since Allan was a fine and very prolific writer. I did like her method for effecting time travel – one minute Sarah was in the present, the next in the past – that simple. But, sadly, despite witnessing the devastating power of war first hand, Sarah’s well meaning activism seems to get lost and I found that very disappointing.
Oh well, Time to Go Back is still worth a read, but I would only give it a weakish recommendation. Which I hate to do because of the poems.
The poems that first caught Sarah’s attention are scattered throughout the novel and, in the novel, they are attributed to her aunt, Larke. In fact, these are poems written by the author herself during the war. And they are quite lovely. Consider this poem about the night of March 12/13, 1941 when Allan witnessed the first heavy bombing of Wallasey:
I saw a broken town beside the grey March sea,
Spray flung in the air and no larks singing,
And houses lurching, twisted, where the chestnut trees
Stood ripped and stark; the fierce wind bringing
The choking dust in clouds along deserted streets,
Shaking the gaping rooms, the jagged raw white stone.
Seeking for what in this quiet, stricken town? It beats
About each fallen wall, each beam, leaving no livid,
Aching place alone.
This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up
This book was purchased for my personal library
February 22, 2009
Sarah goes back in time to WWII London and experiences the challenges of the Blitz.
May 18, 2020
this IS a keeper!
July 16, 2019
Furrowed Middlebrow and friends are big fans of Mabel Esther Allan,. who I had not read before this. I thought I'd start with a book of hers that is inexpensive and easy to find: "Time to Go Back," a 1972 children's novel about a rebellious teenager who time-travels back to the WWII-era Liverpool area.
The author, who lived through the Blitz, clearly intended both to set down her personal memories and impressions, and to give modern young people a flavor of what it was like to live through the terror of nighttime bombing raids, along with the emotional physical toll and upheaval that war enacts on a population.
(I'm reminded of a recent interview with Roger Daltrey, who said that when he was young he rebelled against and disdained his parents' complacency, and it was only as an adult that he appreciated that the reason they were so intent on a settled, secure life was that they'd lived through the horrors of World War II.)
The plot itself is slight and somewhat predictable, but the writing is nice, and she does evoke the unsettling aspects of the time and place.
The author, who lived through the Blitz, clearly intended both to set down her personal memories and impressions, and to give modern young people a flavor of what it was like to live through the terror of nighttime bombing raids, along with the emotional physical toll and upheaval that war enacts on a population.
(I'm reminded of a recent interview with Roger Daltrey, who said that when he was young he rebelled against and disdained his parents' complacency, and it was only as an adult that he appreciated that the reason they were so intent on a settled, secure life was that they'd lived through the horrors of World War II.)
The plot itself is slight and somewhat predictable, but the writing is nice, and she does evoke the unsettling aspects of the time and place.
June 26, 2020
Couldn’t help but compare this to my favourite timeslip story, Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park, and it just doesn’t match up. The time the protagonist spends in the past isn’t long enough to seem meaningful, and there’s something disquieting about her falling a little in love with one young man, only to then marry his son who has the same name. In Playing Beatie Bow the generations were further apart and the line of descent not as direct. And the thoughts of the protagonist about her friends and her involvement in protests, both of which she regrets and rejects, didn’t ring at all true. They seemed to be too obviously Allen’s thoughts and attitudes; someone much older than the protagonist was meant to be. I usually enjoy Allen’s writing; this book irritated me.
October 15, 2020
Smartly written book about a girl who is walking through her mother's old town and is transported back to World War II. She meets her mother and her grandmother when they were young. She even stays in their bomb shelter as bombs land around them. She also meets a young man who lived next to her mother. She also meets the aunt that everyone says she looks like, but who was killed during a bombing raid. Great book!
April 10, 2010
My favorite book in 6th and 7th grade.
August 4, 2013
Probably my favorite read from grade school which inured me with a taste for time travel. Today's NYT Book Review Essay prompted me to add it.
February 26, 2021
Intruiging
October 15, 2023
This short time-slip book is a bildungsroman that revolves around a young girl's travels back into the past, to her mother's childhood in the war. Its strength lies in that the wartime setting comes from the author's own experiences, and this becomes perhaps more effective as the book ages (at the time the book was published, the war was thirty years ago - I don't think a similar book today, going back to the nineties would be so interesting). I found the time-slip to a near past an uncommon choice, which was quite interesting, the daughter seeing her mother's childhood.
It is a very short book, around 130 pages in large print, and I think perhaps it would have been nice if it was fleshed out a little more exploring some of the emotions further, although it doesn't feel like a skeleton of a book. Part of the story's message, is that while each generation thinks themselves different from the last with bigger issues, they each have their own challenges to overcome. Generally this came across well, but I felt like there was a slight undertone of Victorian improving story, with a feel of 'isn't Sarah good now, she's realised these things were silly and now she is being a sensible girl'. Thankfully this was only a little here and there, and didn't spoil the story.
It is a very short book, around 130 pages in large print, and I think perhaps it would have been nice if it was fleshed out a little more exploring some of the emotions further, although it doesn't feel like a skeleton of a book. Part of the story's message, is that while each generation thinks themselves different from the last with bigger issues, they each have their own challenges to overcome. Generally this came across well, but I felt like there was a slight undertone of Victorian improving story, with a feel of 'isn't Sarah good now, she's realised these things were silly and now she is being a sensible girl'. Thankfully this was only a little here and there, and didn't spoil the story.
October 1, 2023
This powerful, unique time travel story involves a teenage girl from the 70s who travels back in time to the bombing of Liverpool during WWII. The author's descriptions are vivid and powerful, especially since they are based on her personal experiences, and I appreciated the family themes. I also found it fascinating to think about WWII from the perspective of a teenager in the 70s, when the war was still such recent history. That gave this book far greater intrigue and pathos for me than WWII time travel books set and published decades later, and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to read this scarce book through inter-library loan.
June 1, 2019
Memorable novel about a rather rebellious teen who ends up traveling back in time several times. Sarah ends up in 1941, meeting her mother at age 14 and experiencing the bombing of the Liverpool area during World War II. Quite enjoyable.
May 1, 2020
Updating my goodreads book list. My favorite book by her and one of my all time favorite books.
May 4, 2016
One of my favourite books as a teenager.
September 9, 2017
Ich habe das Buch in einem Rutsch durchgelesen und es hat mir wirklich sehr gut gefallen. Es ist zwar sehr kurz trotzdem sind diese 130 Seiten sehr packend und ich hatte alles bildlich vor Augen. Auf jeden Fall sehr empfehlenswert.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews