Book Club Meets: Sliding doors and the power of a name, with Florence Knapp
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Has your name influenced who you’ve become? Would you have different characteristics, would people react differently to you, would your life have turned out differently, if you had a different name? These are the questions author Florence Knapp grapples with in her book The Names – our Happy Place Book Club read for June.
In this chat, Fearne and Florence share their own experiences of having slightly unusual names, and how they shaped them. Florence also explains the long journey she’s been on to get a novel published, having started writing in the late ‘90s, and wonders that she likes getting lost in fictional worlds because she’s naturally introverted.
Thank you to Phoenix for the use of The Names audiobook, narrated by Dervla Kirwan, and to composer and musician Jeni Saint for the opening music.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Book Club Meets: Clare Leslie Hall
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Cora's mother always used to say children were whipped up by the wind. |
| 0:05.1 | Hey, welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. |
| 0:08.7 | Cora feels it in herself now. |
| 0:10.9 | Today, The Names by Florence Knapp. |
| 0:13.4 | Gusts lever at the fir trees behind the house and burst down the side passage to hurl themselves at the gate. |
| 0:20.5 | Inside, too, worries Skitter and Eddie, |
| 0:24.6 | because tomorrow, if morning comes, if the storm stops raging, Cora will register the name of her |
| 0:31.7 | son, or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalize who he will become. |
| 0:40.2 | Cora has never liked the name Gordon, the way it starts with a splintering sound that makes |
| 0:45.4 | her think of cracked, boiled sweets, and then ends with a thud like someone slamming down a sports |
| 0:50.5 | bag. |
| 0:51.9 | Gordone! |
| 0:54.1 | But what disturbs her more |
| 0:55.8 | is that she must now pour the goodness |
| 0:58.0 | of her son into its mould, |
| 1:00.2 | hoping he'll be strong enough to find |
| 1:02.1 | his own shape within it. |
| 1:04.3 | Because Gordon is a name |
| 1:06.0 | passed down through the men in her husband's |
| 1:08.4 | family, and it seems impossible |
| 1:10.5 | it could be any other way. |
| 1:13.1 | But this doesn't stop her arguing back and forth with herself, considering all the times |
... |
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