SWALLOWING GRANDMA

Katherine Millar is eighteen and desperate to be less fat, less swotty andto have cooler friends. But most of all, she wishes she had two parents,instead of one grandma, Poll. Poll is pushing seventy, half blind andutterly poisonous. She has looked after Katherine since she was a baby,when her father was killed in a car crash and her mother vanished. Poll'sambition is for things to stay exactly the same for ever, and forKatherine never to leave their pit village of Bank Top. Katherine hasother ideas, and she can feel change is coming; the omens are all aroundher. In the meantime, she cleans up after Poll, revises for her exams,watches daytime television and surfs the net at the library trying to findout how to be bulimic. What she doesn't quite realize yet is that lifewon't always wait for you to catch up with it. Swallowing Grandma is aperceptive, vivid and painfully funny novel about the ties of love andloathing, and the ways in which our versions of the past can thwart ourvisions for the future. In Katherine and Poll, Kate Long has created twounforgettable characters locked in an epic battle over whose side of thestory will prevail. Wise, warm and witty ...Will keep you reading untilthe very last page