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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

Audiobooks

Factual

Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

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

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Andrew Solomon - Far From the Tree

Book of the Week: Andrew Solomon - Far From the Tree: Episode 4

Factual: Families & Relationships

Far From the Tree

Episode 4

Andrew Solomon - Far From the Tree

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Andrew Solomon - Far From the Tree, Episode 4

What happens to an ordinary family when a child commits extreme criminal behaviour?

Stories of families who learn to deal with exceptional children. What happens to an ordinary family when a child commits acts of extreme criminal behaviour? Read by Kerry Shale.

The time-worn adage says that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, meaning that a child resembles his or her parents. The children described in this book are apples that have fallen elsewhere - some a couple of orchards away, some on the other side of the world. Yet myriad families learn to tolerate, accept and finally celebrate children who are not what they originally had in mind.

Andrew Solomon introduces us to families coping with deafness, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, and disability - as well as families who have children who are prodigies, who are gay, or who become criminals.

While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, Solomon documents the repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us.

Episode 4 (of 5):
What happens to an apparently ordinary family when a child commits acts of extreme criminal behaviour? Dylan Klebold was one of the two teenagers responsible for the shootings at Columbine High School. His parents still live in the house where he grew up.

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

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.

Stories of families who learn to deal with their exceptional children, by Andrew Solomon

An investigation into the challenges of parenthood tells the stories of families who learn to deal with their exceptional children and find profound meaning in doing so.

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Book of the Week

Andrew Solomon - Far From the Tree

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