In her touching, provocative and profoundly insightful book, she captures a sense of what motherhood really feels like - how intense, sensuous, joyful, boring, profound and dark it can be. It is not a sequel exactly, but a continuation of the memoir written by Clover of her life with her husband Pete and her children, focussing on the pregnancy, birth and first year of her youngest child Lester, with her other children’s and her own life intertwined.

This is the conversation we should all have about motherhood, it is wild and sleepless but I wouldn't have it any other way. I always appreciate honesty in a person and it made me love my time listening to Stroud reading her book to me (as I had the audiobook). Just as being fucked so hard it hurts can feel good, this pain becomes something I recognise as clearly as I know myself.

Hodně mě ovlivňuje skutečnost, že u audioknihy čekám trochu procítěný přednes, a ne monotónní, skoro až strojové čtení bez špetky emocí, zvlášť když se jedná o takhle emotivní knihu. When someone gives her new baby a stuffed toy monkey, she longs to surround him with more ancient and serious things: the Bible, The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

I love how she isn't afraid to lay it all bare and admit she's making it up as she goes along, like so many of do. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. With rare exceptions such as bank holidays, the book group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 7.Clover Stroud’s powerhouse of a memoir gets closer than anything else I have read to answering that question. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Her own mother was brain damaged in a horrific riding accident when Stroud was 16: “Much of my life has been about seeking strong motion both to make me feel alive and distract from the pain of existence.

Clover describes the bliss of being a new mother and the complete immersion you have whilst parenting young children through to navigating the way your relationship changes once your children grow through their teen years, ready to leave the nest. At seven hours long, the audiobook was on the shorter side and I could happily have listened to another two hours at least.Reading this book felt like having the most honest and emotional discussion with one of my best friends. Windows users should also consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, or switching to Firefox or Chrome.

Mother to five children, Clover Stroud has navigated family life across two decades, both losing and finding herself. She has a live in nanny and was able to just go off in a weekend away with her husband to rejuvenate her marriage.

I strongly related to hearing how lonely being a mother can be whilst also feeling astronomical amounts of love for your child. But I gave it 3 stars because I did enjoy the writing about the teenage years and in some parts it was poignant enough to bring a tear to my eye. I feel like the author awakened emotions in me I never knew that I had, or hadn’t felt for many many years.