JUSTINE SLESS - Before I Sing You This Song

Sunderland, 1978. Elsie Bishop has something to say. If only the world is ready to listen.
 
By day, Elsie works in Chalkie’s fruit and veg shop, surrounded by tatties, gossip and the everyday dramas of working-class life. By night, she dreams of doing something women like her simply aren't supposed to do: standing on a stage and making people laugh.
 
Inspired by legendary North East comedian Bobby Thompson and armed with a sharp tongue, an eye for the ridiculous and more determination than confidence, Elsie sets out to find her own voice in the fiercely male world of the working men's club circuit.
 
But in 1978, a woman's place is still very much supposed to be somewhere other than behind a microphone.
 
Funny, poignant and bursting with the language and spirit of the North East, Before I Sing You This Song is a story of class, gender, ambition and one ordinary woman's determination to become something extraordinary.
 
Set against the unmistakable backdrop of Sunderland in the late 1970s, Justine Sless's warm and wonderfully observed novel celebrates the women whose stories were so often swept under the rug — and the courage it takes to stand up and be heard.