Problem solving
There are shades of Bridget Jones in Kate Tough’s story of a thirtysomething Glasgow singleton, finds Jane Bradley
Originally published in 2014 by the now-defunct Scottish publisher Cargo, under the title Head for the Edge, Keep Walking, Kate Tough’s debut novel has now been granted a resurrection by Abacus, an imprint of Little Brown.
The name of the main character has been switched from Jill to Rhona – presumably to kilt it up a bit for the RUK reader – but otherwise the gist of the story seems to have remained the same.
Thirty-something Rhona Beech lives in Glasgow. She has recently split up with her partner of nine years, her job is unsatisfactory and she has received some worrying news about her health.
This story charts how she deals with these problems, with her help of her oldest friend Hilary and other pals Tania, Erin and Lizzie.
The Scottish setting of the novel is refreshing. Usually, these comingof-middle-age
(and I say that tongue in cheek as a nearing-middle-age female) female-led novels are set in the world of public relations in London, complete with in-jokes about the state of the Tube and references to areas of the UK capital which we are all assumed to have heard of, no matter where the majority of the book’s readers actually live.
Instead, here, we have the odd bit of Scots dialect, “tenement-lined streets”, at least one reference to a loch and descriptions of Scottish cities. She arrives in Edinburgh on a trip to her company’s east coast office to see a somewhat predictable “fulllength window view of the Castle” – a nod to local readers and perhaps a welcome holiday for those from elsewhere.
However, despite its Scottish location, it does still have the feel of the Bridget Jones about it: “Note to self,” says Rhona’s friend Hilary. “’Email Rhona’s boss with details of Facebook prank. Suggest Rhona is sacked.’”
The recipient of three Creative Scotland funding awards, for fiction and poetry, Tough is clearly an accomplished writer. Rhona herself is a believable character and at times is sharp and ironic.
However, although the novel is billed by its publishers as being funny – I didn’t find it so. Thoughtful, perhaps; off-the-wall at times. Surprising, but not funny.
From the beginning, Rhona is clearly suffering a mental breakdown: “I get up. I go to work. I spend the whole day waiting for the words on my screen to make sense. In the commuter broth of the carriage home, tears run in hot lines to my jaw and for a minute or two, I let them.” Not funny. Really, not funny. Or is it? Perhaps it is in a way, in the style of Fleabag – the cult BBC TV series which everybody else on this
planet loved and which I found so painfully, realistically, depressing that I couldn’t bring myself to watch beyond the second episode.
This novel is also not for hypochondriacs like me who are averse to hearing about health problems unless they have to – this is a warts and all romp through the wonders of NHS treatment and the trials and tribulations thereof. At a time when smear tests to detect cervical cancer feature strongly in government adverts in a bid to increase the rate of women showing up for them, Keep Walking, Rhona
Beech could be used as a poster book for the campaign.
The inclusion of Rhona’s illness is shocking and brave and differentiates it from other books of the single thirty-something genre.
I’m just not sure that for me, it differentiated it enough to elevate it from the ordinary to the extraordinary.