Jenny Kleeman and Sam Knight
A Good Read
BBC
4.2 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 BBC Audio in Bristol Join the conversation @agoodreadbbc Instagram
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:03.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:06.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:11.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:13.4 | I'm Jenny Clemen and in the new series of The Gift, |
| 0:17.5 | we'll hear more stories emerging out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. |
| 0:22.8 | They did know that I was different. |
| 0:25.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:27.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:27.4 | Then you met. |
| 0:28.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:29.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:30.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.4 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, my guests and I have each chosen a book to talk about that we really like. |
| 0:43.1 | We've also read one another's choices. |
| 0:45.5 | Are we going to like those as much? |
| 0:47.4 | Well, let's find out. |
| 0:48.8 | With me, our two journalists. |
| 0:50.5 | Jenny Clemen is a regular voice on Radio 4, |
| 0:52.8 | and in print she writes long-form articles for The Guardian and the FT and Sunday Times magazines. |
| 0:59.2 | Her second book, The Price of Life, came out this year. |
| 1:02.5 | With Jenny is Sam Knight, a staff writer at The New Yorker, to which he contributes a monthly letter from the UK on everything from British politics to the art market and sport. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

