Description

AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘She is a vigorous and fearless writer, grabbing us by the throat to describe life’s horrors and her responses to them, filling her pages with the magnetic force of her own life as wife, lover and mother of five which somehow has to go on.’ SPECTATOR

‘With brutal, beautiful honesty, Clover articulates how bereavement shocks and dislocates – and in all the pain, there’s SO much life.’ MARIAN KEYES

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‘Can death bring something good to my life?’

A few weeks before Christmas, Clover’s sister died of breast cancer, aged forty-six. Just days before, she had been given years to live. Her sudden death split Clover’s life apart. The Red of My Blood charts Clover’s fearless passage through the first year after her sister’s death.

It is a book about what life feels like when death interrupts it, and about bearing the unbearable and describing an experience that seems beyond words. Lyrical, hopeful, it is also about the magical way in which death and life exist so vividly beside one another, and the wonder of being human.

‘A beautiful addition to the literature of loss. It will serve as a lit match, to be passed from one person to the next in the darkest moments.’ THE SUNDAY TIMES

Publisher Review

Like a magician, she puts her grief into a hat and pulls out 70,000 perfect words to describe what it is like when language fails you. Courageous and utterly compelling, this is a book that will wring you out, wear you down and leave you filled with wonder. -- Francis Wilson * The Oldie * Clover writes with visceral honesty about the lived experience of her grief for her sister Nell - in all its hues; moving swiftly between darkness and light whilst her love for Nell remains powerfully alive and present. -- Julia Samuel The Red of my Blood is one of the most haunting, gripping books I've read in recent memory. Stroud's writing about overwhelming loss is knife-sharp, beautiful, and profound. This is a masterful memoir, which will echo with its readers for a long time. -- Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles and Circe Clover's writing is sensationally beautiful and so quick with life in the face of utter bereavement as to be almost a resurrection in itself. She is as golden as her sister clearly was. -- Laura Cumming, author of On Chapel Sands I love Clover Stroud's writing. It feels like she's mining for treasure, drilling down with lyrical prose, getting to the thing that makes us human. That this book about death and grief is so life-affirming is a testament to her talent. -- Christie Watson Clover Stroud is a fearless explorer of the human heart, and a writer of incomparable grace and passion. She also understands more about loss, sorrow, grief, and resilience than most people will ever have to learn. She is a gift, and so is her work. -- Elizabeth Gilbert A miracle of a book. A hope of a book. An absolute gutting masterpiece of a book so that it transcends book and becomes a record of life, a symphony of love and all the pain that must be endured to hear that kind of glittering gorgeous love. A must read for anyone with a soul. -- Lisa Taddeo With brutal, beautiful honesty, Clover articulates how bereavement shocks and dislocates - and in all the pain, there's SO much life. -- Marian Keyes I am reeling from the beauty and blazing honesty of The Red of My Blood. What a brave, golden and unflinching piece of writing. It transcends the personal and shines its light not only on the devastation of loss and grief, but the (sometimes unwanted) process of living inside and beside it. -- Rachel Joyce This brilliant book is beautiful without being pretty; it's a gut punch, a cry from the heart on behalf of everyone who has been unmade by the death of a loved one. -- Sophie Heawood