THE Cathouse, young Goths on the steps of GOMA, George Square’s silent raves…this is Glasgow in the noughties, and it has a starring role in a new book by a young city writer.
Emma Grae’s new novel The Tongue She Speaks is set in 2007, a time the author remembers with affection.
“I think 2007 just stood out to me as a particularly happy time in my life,” says Emma.
“I was a teenager, but it was just before I had to sit my Standard Grades at school, so I was able to enjoy getting more 'grown up' without having any major stresses in my life.
“I also remember joining a David Bowie forum that year, which is a part of the book…”
She adds, grinning: “I remember cutting my hair quite drastically in a 'this is me!' move around then. So yeah, it stood out as a year when I was growing into myself, albeit in a very different way from the protagonist of my book, Cathy O'Kelly.”
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Emma’s teenage heroine Cathy is dreaming of becoming a real Scots writer, and finds herself torn between English – the formal language of education and the very name of her favourite subject – and the unacknowledged other language on everybody’s tongues: the language of Burns, Jack and Victor, and her own Great-Granda, who proves to have been a poet himself.
The book brings “noughties nostalgia face-to-face with Glaswegian grit” and explores the prejudice and classism faced by Scots speakers across the country, explains Emma.
“Teachers are blind to the talents of students who read with an accent; employers turn up their noses at Scots ‘slang’; parents who endured corporal punishment for using Scots enforce the same standards on the next generation - and so the cycle continues,” she says.
“If it’s so bad, why dae we aw speak it?”
The picture painted of Glasgow is bound to strike a chord with readers who remember the Cathouse Under-18 discos, hanging about on the steps of the Gallery of Modern Art, and going to the silent discos in George Square, says Emma.
“I was a little too young to spend a huge amount of time in town alone in the city in 2007 specifically, but the book is very much a reflection of life in town from the mid-to-late noughties, as I did go to the Cathouse Unders and that was my first experience of Glasgow at night when I was about 15,” she says.
“I just remember how exciting it all was - and how everyone else my age seemed to have their look down to a tee. I definitely admired that, as my mum would have never let me look like that. The ways I shook things up at that age were comparatively minor, although I did try to rebel, which is probably why I ended up in the Cathouse AKA the Catty….”
Emma, who is passionate about the Scots language and breaking the stigma around mental illness, adds: “I know I was very much on social media back then, and it really was a different place. Glasgow famously had a Silent Rave that me and my friends went to in George Square one Saturday.
“I'd almost completely forgotten about it until I was writing the book and thinking about life back then. There's actually a video of it still on YouTube. That sort of thing very much seems like early internet culture life, and I wanted that to come across in the book.”
The Tongue She Speaks by Emma Grae and published by Luath Press is out now.
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