Was Clydeside in the 1960s really this grim?

Thirteen-year-old Kathleen Gallagher is the eldest of four children, a bright girl who divides her time between school, part-time work and helping to raise siblings Morag, Rosie and baby Martin. Life is harder than it needs to be, as their drunken, violent father walked out on them after Martin was born and has to be accosted every Friday for money from his wage packet.

The blow of being abandoned by their father, and the daily scrimping and saving to make ends meet, has hit the family hard. Their mother, Nellie, a permanently crabbit woman with no qualms about slapping her kids when they step out of line, is falling into a depression that only worsens with the death of her own mother, Granny Meikle.

Kathleen is the smartest girl in her year, and wants a better future than working in the same bra factory as her mother. She dreams of university and becoming a doctor or lawyer, but Nellie insists that she’ll have to leave school the following year to start work and bring some money into the household. For all her intelligence, spirit and determination, the cards are stacked against Kathleen at every turn.

Kitten Heels by Maureen Cullen (Image: Ringwood)

The community Cullen recreates here is very much one where the women run things. They’re the organisers, the resourceful ones who keep things on an even keel and mediate disputes. There aren’t many male characters in Kitten Heels, and with a few exceptions they’re feckless and abusive, sometimes horrifyingly so.

The fact that society is weighted in their favour is the source of an underlying anger that runs through the book, and it’s an injustice that is reinforced by the Catholic church, which forbids divorce and ensures that teenage girls are left ignorant and ashamed about sex, those who stray from the path being ostracised, like the friend of Kathleen’s who gets pregnant and is banished to Newcastle.

There’s no love interest in Kathleen’s life. Her one date turns into an assault and understandably, given her experience of men so far, she figures that if she can’t make it into Law or Medicine then becoming a nun doesn’t sound such a bad deal.

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It’s a grim environment of poverty, misogyny and lack of opportunity, but it’s made bearable by the closeness and supportiveness of the community. Whatever happens, there’s always someone to look out for you, or even a whole neighbourhood of someones.

Times like those, and the moments when Nellie can show her daughter affection and gratitude even from the depths of her despair, are the heart and soul of a novel that’s full of well-observed detail and resonant emotional touches.

Plus, there are always times when you just have to laugh. Such as when the pompous man from the council blithely marches into a room with no floorboards and crashes through the floor, his lower half dangling from the downstairs ceiling. Like much of Kitten Heels, it sounds like a retelling of something that actually happened. How much is based on life is hard to say, but it’s an accomplished first novel imbued with all the immediacy of a memoir.