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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

By: Jeanette Winterson
Narrated by: Jeanette Winterson
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About this listen

Shortlisted for: UK Author of the year – Specsavers National Book Awards 2012

When Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, left home at 16 because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: "Why be happy when you could be normal?" This book is the story of a life's work to find happiness. It is the story of how the painful past returned to haunt Jeanette's later life, and send her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. It is also a book about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft which supports us when we are sinking.

©2011 Jeannette Winterson (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Art & Literature Authors LGBTQ+ Studies Lesbian Studies Funny Happiness Heartfelt Inspiring Witty Thought-Provoking

The Pride List of Queer Storytelling

To mark Pride 2023 Audible teamed up with non-profit organisation, Out on the Page, supporter and champion of LGBTQIA+ writers and writing, to release an extensive Pride List of Queer Storytelling. Featuring contributions from some of the UK’s most important and exciting voices from the LGBTQIA+ community, this audiobook is one of the many featured on the list that is available to listen to on Audible.
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This is an honest and forthright account of Jeanette's life, her childhood and her eventual search for her birth mother. Some of the incidents, such as being put out on the doorstep were not unusual when I was growing up, so I related to the matter of fact way she related these childhood experiences. I tend to listen to books while in my car, this one, I listened to at every opportunity. I'd not seen or read 'Oranges', although I had heard of it. It's now on my list of things to read/watch at the next opportunity. Jeanette is a brave woman who has done much to promote the emancipation of women, and this book illustrates the pathway that led her there.

thoroughly absorbing

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I found the beginning slow going, but was transfixed for the second half of the book. An emotional rollercoaster, such sn open writer exploring areas of her life through her text that would break most people.

A bit slow building to an emotional ending

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Great listen after Oranges. All the better for being read by Jeanette Winterson herself. Only wish she narrated more of her books!

all the better for being read by author

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This is a brilliantly told and narrated memoir that focuses perticularly on Jeanette's crazy religious upbringing by her adopted mother and her journey to finding her real mother. Funny and poignant it is intelligently and honestly written. Would highly recommend!

An hilarious and touching memoir.

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Only sorry that a big chunk was missed out but perhaps there will be another one that fills it in.

Loved it

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