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Jenny Kleeman and Sam Knight

Two memoirs are up for discussion: Educated by Tara Westover and Hilary Mantel's Giving Up The Ghost. Inbetween them, the latest novel by Anne Enright, The Wren, The Wren.

EDUCATED by Tara Westover, chosen by Jenny Kleeman
THE WREN, THE WREN by Anne Enright, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
GIVING UP THE GHOST by Hilary Mantel, chosen by Sam Knight

Journalist and broadcaster Jenny Kleeman (of Radio 4's The Gift and author of The Price of Life) chooses Tara Westover's memoir Educated, which caused a sensation when it was first published. It's about her childhood growing up in an isolated Mormon family in rural Idaho, who were preparing for the end of the world, and didn't believe in school, doctors or medicine. It's about how she studied her way out of a difficult upbringing, eventually earning a PhD at Cambridge University.

Sam Knight (staff writer at the New Yorker and author of The Premonitions Bureau) also picks a memoir, but of a very different kind. He goes for Hilary Mantel's beguiling Giving Up The Ghost. In it, she explores the real, and imaginary, ghosts of her life - the illnesses that have haunted her body, the family she would never have, and the art of writing.

Harriett Gilbert brings a work of fiction by a writer she loves, the Irish writer Anne Enright. They discuss her latest novel The Wren, The Wren, a story which speaks about the inheritance of trauma and the price of love.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for 麻豆官网首页入口 Audio in Bristol
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28 minutes

Last on

Mon 11 Nov 2024 15:00

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  • Mon 11 Nov 2024 15:00

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