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Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Book of the Week: Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?: Episode 2

Factual: Life Stories

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Episode 2

Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Episode 2

Jeanette Winterson recalls how books were banned in her house when growing up.

Books were banned from the household she grew up except for the Bible and Shakespeare. Jeanette Winterson reads her memoir.

Books were banned in the Winterson household when Jeanette Winterson was growing up, but the language of the bible and of Shakespeare still coloured her childhood.

Elements of the story are familiar to those who read her fictionalised version of this childhood in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985). This memoir exposes some of the harsher truths and more bizarre incongruities. But it is also the story of how in later life, and recent years, the profound sense of loss and absence was catastrophically detonated by the end of a relationship. 

Struggling to remain intact, still clinging to her passion for language and literature, the author began to rebuild her sense of self and the way she lives her life. Love arrived and so too did a sense of home - and with it the courage to go back into the past and find the person who had always wanted her in those first few weeks of life. 

Funny, acute, fierce and celebratory, this is a tough-minded search for belonging, for love, an identity, a home, and a mother.

Read by Jeanette Winterson 


Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Jeanette Winterson's new memoir charts the grim truth and surreal comedy of her life

Jeanette Winterson reads from her new memoir, which charts the grim truth and surreal comedy behind the fictionalised version she gave in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

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Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

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