Whenever You’re Ready

A photo of Trish Bolton's novel, Whenever You're Ready. The cover is a blush pink colour and has a colourful tablescape on it.

An unexpected death finds Lizzie, Alice and Margot at various crossroads in their lives, caught between looking back and moving on.

Lizzie is reeling from a decades-old secret that changes everything she thought she knew about her friends, her family and her marriage. Alice has always been the good-time girl, as charismatic presenting the weather on television as she is working as a life model. But decades of piecemeal work have left her with a safety net that is rapidly unravelling. Meanwhile, Lizzie's perfectionist daughter Margot is realising that, despite having built herself a faultlessly curated life, she hasn't put her troubled past behind her as neatly as she thought she had.

Whenever You're Ready is a wise, wry, and wistful novel about grief, family, female friendship, ageing and ageism, that will appeal to fans of The Weekend by Charlotte Wood who have been looking for a similar ensemble drama with authentic, richly drawn characters.

Reviews for Whenever You’re Ready

Bolton is a natural-born storyteller and her debut novel is a gift to us all.
— Lee Kofman
Social commentary shot through with wicked humour. I loved it.
— Lucy Treloar
Tender, warm-hearted and wise.
— Toni Jordan
Engaging, moving and full of heart.
— Suzanne Leal
The grief in Bolton’s novel is weighty and pervasive, but her tone is light and matter-of-fact; it’s as if Sally Hepworth wrote Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light.
— Emily Westmoreland
Trish Bolton renders visible the complex lives of older women who are so often invisible in our culture. A page-turner of a novel.
— Sian Prior
Bolton draws strong but nuanced characters with considerable perceptiveness, and her crisp prose style fuses wit and wisdom with a rare lightness of touch.
— The Age
Natural storyteller Bolton’s debut novel is a staggeringly ambitious and thought-provoking dive into the lives of three women who must face up to change in the wake of sudden loss.
— The Australian Women’s Weekly
Whenever You’re Ready is a fine debut, one suffused with heart, compassion and forgiveness for the sins of friends.
— Madeleine Swain
Each of the women in this novel feels like she could be a friend.
— Sophie Green
Trish Bolton has created a beautiful story in her debut novel Whenever You’re Ready, a tale that brims with heart, warmth, wit, tenderness, compassion and the knowing wisdom that comes with each passing year.
— Cass Moriarty
Whenever You’re Ready is a much-needed documenting of the very real difficulties experienced by older women. It never diminishes the characters by treating them as stereotypes…
— Carol Lefevre
It is a superb book. Classy. Clever. Real. Bravo!
— Goodreads
Trish is a wonderful storyteller. The characters are wonderful commentaries on the societal issues facing women. Very clever, could not put it down.
— Goodreads

Whenever You’re Ready in the media