The Wild Other cover art

The Wild Other

A Memoir

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The Wild Other

By: Clover Stroud
Narrated by: Esther Wane
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About this listen

'Extraordinary. I've never met anyone who has read it and doesn't rank it as one of their favourite books.' DOLLY ALDERTON

'So fierce and brave and visceral and raw - will stay with me forever. I loved it.' ELIZABETH GILBERT

'Full of heart, bravery and adventure.' AMY LIPTROT

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE

Clover Stroud grew up in rural Wiltshire surrounded by animals and family. When she was just sixteen her adored mother had a horrific riding accident which left her permanently brain-damaged, and suddenly Clover was left to fend for herself. She embarked on an extraordinary journey to heal her broken heart, courting men and danger through two marriages and five children.

The Wild Other is a grippingly honest account of love, sex and travelling to the darkest edges of human experience and back again. Powerful and deeply emotional, this is the story of an extraordinary life lived at its fullest.

©2017 Clover Stroud (P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited Animals Biological Sciences Grief & Loss Mental Health Mood Disorders Motherhood Outdoors & Nature Parenting & Families Personal Development Psychology & Mental Health Relationships Science Inspiring Health Human Brain Memoir

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All stars
Most relevant  

What made the experience of listening to The Wild Other the most enjoyable?

The honesty with which Stroud tells her true feelings

Who was your favorite character and why?

Clover Stroud as above

What about Esther Wane’s performance did you like?

Clear and unaffected

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Thrill seeker

Any additional comments?

Amazing strength of personality and character to experience just what she has.

Incredibly honest

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I had hoped that Clover Stroud herself would be reading this audiobook as she was so excellent at reading her book The Red of my Blood. However, Esther did a wonderful job, and I enjoyed it immensely. Clover writes so well, and that’s an understatement.

Beautifully read. Beautifully written.

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Life, love, grief and motherhood, punctuated by horses, a heart wrenching memoir that's beautifully narrated

Beautiful

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I loved this book. I think Clover is an example of bravery and courage. It’s her attitude to her ‘needs’ that impresses me. Her embracing of what she needs to experience in order to grow. An unflinching love of life, living and her true nature of fierce friendship, love, family and home place. She enables me to shed tears and shake off some sorrow and shame accumulated throughout my journey. Her words help to make sense of the choices and challenges life throws at us/me. Thank you Clover for another wonderful book.

Outstanding writing

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If you have experienced trauma and the perpetual impact it has on your life, in both good times and bad, this book will resonate deeply with you.
Clover’s reminiscence of her happy childhood, her bond with her mother, her sibling relationships, the power of her connection with horses, is exquisitely expressed in this wonderful book. Her life takes her on so many adventures, throughout every one of them she learns to deal with the haunting and deep rooted trauma that tethers her wherever she goes.
This book made me reflect on my own relationships with family, and what I should be grateful for. Her descriptions of the rural contexts she finds herself profoundly bound to, are so tangible, you feel you need to go there and experience them too.
I couldn’t love this book more, as a daughter, mother, sister and wife, it resonated deeply with me. As someone who also wears the internal scar of trauma, it was an extremely cathartic experience listening to her story.

A beautifully raw, honest and relatable memoir

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I listened to this book some weeks ago on the recommendation of a friend and the feelings evoked by it have stayed with me despite listening to other books since then. It is a wonderful book which has been narrated beautifully. Clover and her siblings had an idyllic life with their wonderful, enthusiastic and unconventional mother who gave her children the childhood we all would have liked to have given our children. Their mother's accident is truly dreadful and cruel and the impact of it is then always with Clover and every action and decision she takes following that is a result of that accident. The story triggered memories of my own losses and made it doubly powerful. I highly recommend The Wild Other. It is a beautiful, sensitive, brave and fascinating book and it completely absorbed me. I had to ration how long I listened to it in one go, otherwise I occasionally felt overwhelmed by anxiety for Clover.

Wonderful

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I loved this memoir, I highly recommended this lyrical meditation on love, loss and landscape.

Beautiful, Raw and Poignant

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This is a compelling, at times distressing memoir. The author was just 16 when her mother suffers a devastating riding accident. Although not a single bone is broken she's never able to communicate with her family again and spends the next 22 years mostly in residential care.

It would be enough to dissuade many people from ever getting in the saddle again but instead the teenage Clover leans in to the danger that horses now symbolise. Spells trading gypsy horses in Ireland and as a ranch-hand soon follow as well as a rather peculiar liaison with a circus performer in Chechnya.

Ultimately this is a life-affirming account of a life thoroughly well-lived in spite of or because of the intense trauma and grief of the accident. The book raises difficult questions about whether it is always better that a person escape death, and also the shocking decisions made by our care system.

Stroud doesn't mention that one sister is pottery queen Emma Bridgewater and another is Nell Gifford founder of the circus. Knowing this did make me marvel at the inner drive their mother must have given them before tragedy struck. Beautifully narrated too.

A wild ride

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Fantastically narrated. Clover transports you to her world with incredible writing. Story of horses love loss growing up.

Brilliant story

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Wonderful writing, moving and heartfelt. I adored this book. I've listened more than once to it and I still find the writing scorchingly real, the descriptions of subtle and powerful emotions move me to tears and stop me in my tracks.

Wonderful

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