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The Red of my Blood

A Death and Life Story

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The Red of my Blood

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

Brought to you by Penguin.

'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 fi rst 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.

'An absolute gutting masterpiece of a book.' LISA TADDEO

'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

© Clover Stroud 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

 Grief & Loss Parenting & Families Personal Development Heartfelt

Critic reviews

A beautiful book. I loved every word. (Fearne Cotton)
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)
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)
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)
All stars
Most relevant
Just dazzling, hugely life affirming and just incredibly comforting. I cannot recommend highly enough. Read it and it will change your life for the better.

Hugely beautiful

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I loved having Clover and The Red Of My Blood in my ear. It was comforting having someone understand. To write about how death feels and how life continues and becomes much more sharply in focus. So many moments in this memoir stirred me, made me clasp my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs as tears fell from my eyes. And in the next moment I'm saying "yep" in agreement and nodding my head and smiling. There is truth and human connection in this book. It's much more than a memoir it's a bridge from this word to the next. Thank you Clover. ❤ Louise Grasso @daughterofthebottle

I didn't want it to end...

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I absolutely loved this book. Clover writes exquisitely and intimately and I love her descriptions (of something almost impossible to describe) and the questioning around signs which resonated so much with me. Highly recommended if you have lost someone close. Having it read by the author enhances it all even more. Thank you so much for staring your experience Clover.

Such a beautiful rendering of grief

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After loosing my mum in 2020 to cancer, I have not really been able to make sense of her death and where my life now fits. This book spoke in ways I’ve never heard anyone else speak of death. I felt it fully, I cried and smiled with complete joy at the words. Thank you so very much for allowing me time to feel something more than I did. Feels like the beginning of a journey..

Deeply and achingly felt every word.

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What a work of art!
Clover has done it again!
This book follows on from the death of her sister Nell in 2019.
The way clover writes is so emotive and brutally honest, it feels as if you are reliving the journey with her.
If anyone is looking for a read, then this is it!
A beautifully written experience of having to live after your closest human leaves without you.

Breathtakingly personal and amazingly written!

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