Book Club Meets: Ambitious women and generational trauma, with Emily Henry

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Two writers are competing for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a famous reclusive heiress. One of them is going to uncover the truth behind one of the most scandalous families of the 20th century. The thing is, heiress Margaret is giving each writer different tantalising little pieces of her story...

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry was May’s Happy Place Book Club read. In this chat with Fearne, Emily explains why she’s intrigued by the idea of generational trauma affecting our day to day, and why it’s important to interrogate where your sense of ambition comes from. Is your drive coming from within, or are you trying to prove something to someone?

Plus, Fearne and Emily explore why reading fiction is such a brilliant way to examine your own opinions, values, and moral tendencies through how you react to the characters.

Thank you to Penguin Audio for the use of Great Big Beautiful Life audiobook, narrated by Julia Whelan.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There's an old saying about stories and how there are always three versions of them, yours,
0:05.6	mine, and the truth.
0:07.6	The guy who first said...
0:08.3	Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton.
0:12.0	We're not really supposed to take sides.
0:14.3	We're supposed to deal in fact.
0:15.7	Today, Great Big, Beautiful Life by Emily Henry.
0:19.6	Fact.
0:20.4	Robert Evans, producer, studio exec and actor who coined
0:24.1	that catchy mantra about the truth, was married seven times. Fact. I, Alice Scott, staff writer for
0:31.8	the scratch, aspiring biographer. Not much else. I am not even officially the girlfriend of the man I've been dating for seven months.
0:40.4	Fact. At five feet and nine inches tall, Robert Evans was the exact same height as I am.
0:47.0	Fact. My entire life is quite possibly about to change, and instead of sprinting up the
0:52.5	walkway to the quaint picket fence separating
0:54.7	me from a lifelong dream, I'm sitting in my rental car, blasting air conditioning, and reading
0:59.7	the IMDB page of a man whose name I'd never heard three minutes ago because his quote about
1:04.8	stories popped into my head and also because I'm stalling.
1:08.9	I'm more excited than nervous,
1:11.3	but there are still a great deal of nerves vibrating through me.
1:15.0	With one last deep breath, I turn off the car and pop the door open.
1:19.9	Immediately, the dense midday heat of a Georgia summer hits me from all sides,
1:24.5	a familiar and deeply loved sensation that's only improved by the salty
	...

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