Keep walking, Rhona Beech - Kate Tough

'Incredibly insightful, funny and poignant' Helen Sedgwick

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 so, I let them.

Nothing has turned out quite how Rhona Beech thought: she's been swapping one so-so job for another on an annual basis . . . and now her nine-year relationship has ended abruptly. When her lukewarm efforts to adjust to the changes in her life are thrown entirely up in the air by
some unwelcome news, Rhona has to think again.

Her sardonic, funny, poignant attempts to find an answer to the questions she's facing are helped by a cast of friends, strangers and trained professionals. Funny and tender, Keep Walking, Rhona Beech is a beautifully written and brilliantly observant satire on relationships, friendship and life

Previously published as Head for the Edge, Keep Walking by Cargo Publishing.

Kate Tough has received Creative Scotland funding awards for fiction and poetry and held several literature residencies, including, Cove Park, Vermont Studio Center, Moniack Mhor and Outlandia. Her fiction and poetry has appeared widely in journals including The Texas Review, The Brooklyn Review and New Writing Scotland. Her poetry pamphlet, tilt-shift, was Runner Up in the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, 2017 and her piece, 'People Made Glasgow', was selected as a Best Scottish Poem 2016. She's an invited participant in the Edwin Morgan Trust's International Translation Workshop, 2019. Kate has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow.

A brilliant observation on relationships and friendships, this funny, poignant book by Kate Tough follows Rhona, whose life hasn't turned out how she'd hoped. Having spent years moving from one so-so job to another, her relationship has just ended and she receives unwelcome news. Along with tears and anger, there's laughter and hope
Hello magazine

This beautifully written, gritty and funny satire female friendships, sadness and illness should appeal to fans of TV series Fleabag...its taut and unflinchingly candid narrative holds the reader's attention...Pack it for your next holiday
The Lady magazine

One of my favourite novels of recent years. Incredibly insightful, funny and poignant
Helen Sedgwick, author of The Comet Seekers and The Growing Season

Rhona Beech- sharp-eyed, laconic-tongued, tender-hearted - is your eccentric new best friend. She makes a terrific debut in this witty, chatty, lyrical novel
Kevin MacNeil

What a wonderful book this is. A wry, sardonic slice of life novel about female friendship and the hard choices we all face when our plans for the future don't quite work out like the fairy tale we planned. Stuffed with wit, joy and laugh-out-loud set pieces, it embraces life in all its awkward glory, unafraid to expose the vulnerable, chaotic side of being human, alongside the funny and the warm. I turned the last page and thought, I love Rhona Beech. She made me laugh and she made me cry. She can be my best friend any day
Mary Paulson-Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker

Kate Tough's dry wit and keen observations make this eye-catching debut about a defining moment in the life of thirty-something Rhona Beech both laugh-out-loud funny as well as poignant
Lesley Macdowell

A warm and ferociously witty story of the s*** life throws at us and how we survive it. Truth rings from every page of this assured and engrossing debut
Zoe Strachan

Tough is a unique writer and not easily pigeonholed. Her work has a distinct, curious tone which elevates the stuff of everyday life (love, relationships, sex) and makes it very interesting
Laura Waddell, writer, reviewer & publisher