A beautifully raw, honest and relatable memoir

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.

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Incredibly honest

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.

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1 person found this helpful

Beautifully read. Beautifully written.

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.

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Beautiful

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

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Wonderful

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.

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Beautiful, Raw and Poignant

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

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Completely engaging

This book was completely engaging and I never wanted it to end. It was beautifully written and the reader could have been the author she read with such integrity and passion.

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Wonderful, poignant and hopeful

Honest, raw and moving. Highly recommend

The performance was good although I always like it when the author reads their own work. I feel it adds an additional layer of nuance.

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Brilliantly honest and at times heartwrenching

Master wordsmith, richly flowing story that fascinates and pulls at the heart strings in equal measure. Makes me think am I too cautious in my own life to read of Clovers adventurous Wild one x

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A wild ride

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.

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4 people found this helpful