Book Club Meets: “Women are survivors and scapegoats!” Rage and revenge, with Elizabeth Day
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2025
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elizabeth Day had an urgent need to say something about the way we’re living – about the power, politics, class, sexism, and discrimination that plague the world around us.
She explores all of that, plus perimenopause and female rage, through the entertaining lens of her latest novel One Of Us.
In this live Book Club chat with Fearne, Elizabeth talks about how she realised that – and wanted to write about – women so often being the victims, survivors, and scapegoats of male power and privilege. They also explore whether getting revenge is ever really as sweet as you hope it’ll be...
Elizabeth is famously obsessed with reality TV, so how did The Real Housewives franchise inspire parts of One Of Us, and what does she make of politicians rehabilitating their careers on reality TV and gossip podcasts? Plus, how writing about motherhood in this book allowed Elizabeth to process her own feelings about not having children.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Book Club Meets: Elizabeth Gilbert
Book Club Meets: Aisha Muharrar
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | They've spoken about Ben's desire for leadership a lot over the years, and she has always been |
| 0:06.1 | supportive. Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. |
| 0:10.0 | He didn't make it an absolute priority to inform her, told her that she wasn't to do, |
| 0:17.5 | factor into his decisions, either because he knew she'd go along with it, or because it wouldn't |
| 0:24.6 | matter if she didn't. |
| 0:26.7 | The worst of it is, he's right. |
| 0:30.4 | She doesn't want to divorce him. |
| 0:33.5 | Ben gives her a comfortable life and social standing, and she loves her children. |
| 0:40.7 | Dragging it all through the courts would be protracted and embarrassing, with no guarantee |
| 0:46.2 | that she'd get a financial settlement equal to what she deserved. |
| 0:51.3 | Divorce was for oligarchs and soap stars, not for her. |
| 0:57.0 | So she makes a choice. |
| 1:00.0 | Today is mega exciting because you're going to get to hear what happened at our first ever Happy Place Book Club live |
| 1:06.0 | with one of my best mates, author Elizabeth Day. |
| 1:10.0 | A load of us gathered at the book bar in Chelsea, |
| 1:12.9 | which is the cutest venue of all time. Imagine the most delightful room with walls adorned |
| 1:20.3 | with books and cute little lamps and then a bar where you can have a drink and some food. |
| 1:25.8 | And we had the most gorgeous crowd, |
| 1:28.4 | just like a lovely bunch of beautiful bookworms. |
| 1:31.2 | I'm a fellow bookworm. |
| 1:32.9 | And we all gathered together. |
| 1:34.8 | Everyone was so kind. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 14 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fearne Cotton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Fearne Cotton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.