Jennifer O'Connell

speaker

2,353 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 5d ago

Jennifer O'Connell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The Women's Podcast · Festival women / Sally Hayden on love during wartime · 4 Jun 2026 podcast

to say I kind of loved it.

It's Lionel Shriver's new novel about immigration and it's called A Better Life and it did make me kind of uncomfortable at times so it's been described, I think this is a really fair description of it, it's been described as the novel as an extended op-ed.

OK, so it kind of gets into her views on immigration, which would not be my views on immigration.

But then the beauty of me being an opinion editor is that I spend all week reading views, many of which I don't agree with.

And what I think about them has nothing to do with it.

But it is it's an enjoyable read.

It's funny.

It's very uncompromising.

It's quite cruel.

So the premise is that there's this sort of very.

I'd say she would say virtue signalling New York family headed by a divorced woman who's sort of in the Bell Burdens sort of situation where she has done very well out of the divorce and has a very large house, plenty of bedrooms and a 20 something son living at home with her.

And they take in a Honduran migrant.

And the book then has all this jeopardy about whether or not the Honduran migrant is quite the sort of saintly figure that she at first appears as.

The son is very sceptical and her ex-husband is very sceptical and her daughters are very much on her side.

So, look, they're very shallow characterisations of all the characters and it's a real kind of the culture war is played out in novel form.

I still found it really enjoyable and I'm interviewing her at Dorky and I've interviewed her before and wish me luck is all I can say.

But it's a brilliant read.

I know, it's my, honestly, up there in my top ten of all time novels.

I love it and I have gone back to it twice.

I think I've read it three times in total.

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