Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Lin..., Elizabeth Lovatt
Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Lin..., Elizabeth Lovatt
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Line

Author: Elizabeth Lovatt

Narrator: Roshaan Riyahi-Boni

Unabridged: 12 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Legacy Lit

Published: 05/27/2025


Synopsis

An author creates a narrative blend of history, cultural criticism, and memoir in celebration of everyday queer women, based on a lesbian helpline that existed in North London in the nineties.

With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, whilst also tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family. With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and break-ups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness, this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.
 
Through these revelations of the complexities, difficulties and revelries of everyday life, Lovatt investigates the ethics of writing about queer 'sheros' and the role living-history plays in the way we live today. What do we owe to our lesbian forebears? What can we learn from them when facing racism, transphobia and ableism in the community today?

Steeped in pop culture references and feminist and queer theory, Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is a timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself in the 21st century, and where it might lead us in the future.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on December 20, 2024

Look, I read my own book about four times this year so I think it's okay to count at least one of those in my Good Reads challenge right? Yes, I'm rating it 5* shhhh - I worked really hard on this book and I hope readers like it too!......more

Goodreads review by Phoe on January 27, 2025

Thank You For Calling The Lesbian Line is not a history book, nor a memoir, nor a retelling or commentary; instead, it is a commingling of all these things into a narrative that is compelling, informative, and unflinching. Whilst laced with tenderness and humour, Lovatt does not shy away from diffic......more

Goodreads review by Sonja on May 02, 2025

A very interesting read about the London Lesbian hotline. It turns out to be a lesbian history interspersed with personal stories from the lesbian line logbook. This hotline idea began in the 1970s and ended in 1999. “Lesbian stories are still at the risk of being forgotten.” And this is one way of p......more

Goodreads review by Denise on February 24, 2025

Part memoir, part cultural history, Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is quite unlike anything I've read before and part of my effort to read more nonfiction. It tells both the story of the author's later-in-life coming out journey and personal history as a lesbian, and the story of lesbians an......more

Goodreads review by Kay on February 18, 2025

"To read the logbook is to eavesdrop on a conversation I was never meant to hear," Elizabeth Lovatt writes in the second chapter of the first part of this book on lesbian hotlines. I wonder, then, what drove her to publish this book, which contains some deeply personal, yet also, admittedly, insight......more