The Red of my Blood: A Death and Life Story

(Hardback)

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From the journalist and critically acclaimed author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights comes a raw and penetrating memoir about surviving the loss of her sister and about embracing death as an essential, and enriching, part of life. Like a magician, Clover 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.' - The Oldie One of 'Ten Books to read in 2022' - Independent 'An absolute gutting masterpiece of a book.' LISA TADDEO, author of THREE WOMEN '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.' ELIZABETH GILBERT, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE 'So beautiful, compelling and raw. Clover records the shifting, glittering rainbow of her experience of love and death with extraordinary honesty and precision.' GAVANNDRA HODGE, author of THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE 'The most beautiful, enduring, indelible, transcendent love letter from a sister to a sister that I will ever read' JULIET NICOLSON, author of FROSTQUAKE ............................................................................................................................... '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

Reviews

A beautiful book. I loved every word. -- Fearne Cotton * Happy Place Podcast *
Stroud's beautiful new memoir, The Red of My Blood, is studded with agonising moments ... This is a colourful blast of feeling that picks up on the hallucinogenic oddness of grief, along with the importance of honouring death as an unavoidable part of life. -- Gwendolyn Smith * i newspaper *
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.

Author Bio

Clover Stroud is a writer and journalist, writing regularly for the Sunday Times, the Guardian and the Saturday and Sunday Telegraph, among others. Her first book, The Wild Other, was shortlisted for The Wainwright Prize. Her critically acclaimed second book, My Wild & Sleepless Nights- A Mother's Story was rated one of the 'best books of the year, 2020' by the Observer and the Telegraph and the Sunday Times, and was a Sunday Times bestseller. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and five children.