Kate and her Granny Jean have nothing in common. Jean's great claim to fame is raising her weans without two pennies to rub together, and Kate's an aspiring scriptwriter whose anxiety has her stuck in bad thought after bad thought. But what Jean's Glaswegian family don't know is that she dreamed of being a film star and came a hairsbreadth away from making it a reality. Now in her nineties, Jean is a force to be reckoned with. But when the family starts to fall apart Jean must face her failings as a mammy head-on - and Kate too must fight her demons. Either that or let go of her dream of the silver screen forever...

A Scots family drama of three generations chasing dreams and happiness - when not everyone is quite who they seem

About the Author

Emma Grae is a Scottish author and journalist from Glasgow. She has been writing in Scots since she was a student at the University of Strathclyde, tipsily coauthoring poems with fellow writer Lorna Wallace before moving on to write fiction in the language.

She has published fiction and poetry in the UK and Ireland since 2014 in journals including The Honest Ulsterman, From Glasgow to Saturn and The Open Mouse. As a journalist, she writes under her birth surname, Guinness, and has bylines in a number of publications including Cosmopolitan, the Huffington Post and the Metro.

Be guid tae yer mammy is her first novel.

@emmagraeauthor

Reviews

• 'Emma Grae shows an acute understanding of the fault-lines in a dysfunctional family, and of how old resentments can escalate, pitting complex characters against each other with ease in a painfully raw debut' The Herald
  
• 'A smashing story with a strong Scots voice' Dr Michael Dempster
• 'This is a brave novel... with a strong cultural identity. The main character - a thrawn auld besom wha's guid tae hersel raither than her lassies an granddochters but whase sleekit sense o humour an couthie turn o phrase gars ye like her despite yerse' Billy Kay, author of Scots: The Mither Tongue
• 'Every so often a book comes along that pulls you in so completely you no longer see the pages when you are reading. This is one of those books. One of the characters has OCD, and as someone with OCD myself I found their experiences to be painfully familiar and brilliantly depicted. It's refreshing (and important) to see characters with OCD depicted, where the OCD forms an integral part of their character but is not the driving thrust of the plot. I for one would like to see more of this in fiction! It's great to feel represented like this. This book is both narratively and stylistically exciting. It opened my eyes to how beautiful Scots is and has made me want to read more literature by authors writing in Scots. But mostly this author! I can't wait to see what Emma Grae writes next' Lily Bailey, author of Because We Are Bad

Book Information
ISBN 9781789651171
Author Emma Grae
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Unbound Digital
Publisher Unbound