Before I Sing You This Song

Sunderland, 1978. Elsie Bishop has a husband, a bairn, a job at the fruit and veg shop, and a secret ambition that refuses to stay quiet.Elsie wants to be a comedian.There's just one problem. The working men's club circuit isn't exactly waiting for a working-class housewife to take the microphone.After a disastrous first attempt at stand-up leaves her humiliated, Elsie tries to bury the dream. But every time she watches legendary Northeast comedian Bobby Thompson command a packed club, the urge returns. She doesn't simply want to make her friends laugh across the shop counter. She wants to make a whole room laugh.Between shifts at Chalkie's, nights at the club, motherhood, money worries and a husband who thinks her ambitions are ridiculous, Elsie begins searching for a comic voice of her own.Perhaps the answer has been around her all along, in the women she works beside, the neighbours she watches, the marriage that frustrates her and the absurdities of everyday life in Sunderland.Told with warmth, wit and an unforgettable Northeast voice, Before I Sing You This Song is a funny and moving novel about class, gender, family and the courage it takes to claim a place where nobody expects you to belong.Sometimes finding your voice means daring to use it.