It's Gone Dark Over Bill's Mother's

By Lisa Blower

Lisa Blower celebrates her characters with stories that they wouldn’t want told. She makes the bleak funny, in a voice reminiscent of Alan Bennett, and strikes a new chord in regional and working-class fiction.

With a sharp eye and tough warmth, Lisa Blower brings to life the silent histories and harsh realities of those living on the margins. The matriarch dominates these award-winning stories in Lisa Blower’s debut collection. From the wise, witty and outspoken Nan of ‘Broken Crockery’, who has lived and worked in Stoke-on-Trent for all of her 92 years, never owning a passport, to happy hooker Ruthie in ‘The Land of Make Believe’ or young mum Roxanne in ‘The Cherry Tree’, she appears in many shapes and forms, and always with a stoicism that is hard to break down.

The title is a Potteries saying that means it’s looking a bit bleak, a little like rain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Myriad Editions
• Release date: Apr 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912408177

Lisa Blower

LISA BLOWER is an award-winning short story writer and novelist. Her debut collection, It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother's, pays homage to her Potteries childhood and features ‘Barmouth’ (shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award), ‘Abdul’ (longlisted for the Sunday Times Award), and ‘Broken Crockery’ (winner, The Guardian National Short Story Competition). Her novel Sitting Ducks was shortlisted for the Arnold Bennett Prize and the Rubery, and longlisted for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize and the People’s Book Prize. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Wolverhampton University, where she champions working-class fictions and regional voices. If she had a pound for every time she has travelled the Pondweed journey, she would be a millionaire. She lives in Shrewsbury.