My Wild and Sleepless Nights

A beautifully written, brutally honest dissection of motherhood by a woman who has five children, from pregnancy to teenagers, covering both the extreme highs and lows. Stroud’s writing examines what it is to be a woman with the same sensitive skill fans of her first memoir, The Wild Other, will recall. * Independent *
The best evocation of the all-consuming, self-eroding reality of motherhood, while also being luminous with love. * The Sunday Times *
What does being a mother really feel like? Clover Stroud’s powerhouse of a memoir gets closer than anything else I have read to answering that question. The motherhood she describes is the very antithesis of the sanitised, smiling vision we are sold in washing powder ads… She excels in evoking the feral, instinctive forces that motherhood unleashes… This is a vision of motherhood for the (now middle-aged) MDMA generation… The reader is simply swept up in her painful, wonderful world. Buy it, read it, and enjoy it for the wild ride it is. * The Guardian *
Clover Stroud’s brilliantly unvarnished memoir finds the heroism and poetry in having kids … Much of this book ..reads like a nature memoir, full of landscape both external and internal … How brilliant for someone to write about the blankness as well as the beauty. – Nell Frizzell * Telegraph *
This is quite simply the best book about motherhood I have ever read: touching, tender, honest and true. Even as she’s bracingly direct about the frustrations of motherhood, Stroud also revels in the delights. Bliss and boredom coexist side by side — and the contradictions are at the core of it all. Stroud’s book will give anyone heading out on this fearsome journey a lantern to guide the way. The book is not always pretty, and sometimes its directness is shocking, but it is full of love and honesty. * The Sunday Times *
Brilliant motherhood memoir…Clover Stroud is one of the very best writers on the light and dark of motherhood and, if you enjoyed her debut The Wild Other, you’ll love this. The book follows the first year of her fifth child’s life as she juggles looking after a newborn with dealing with her teenage son’s problematic behaviour. The writing is sublime and honest. * Good Housekeeping *
Best Books of 2020: a touching guide to the joys and terrors of parenting. * The Times *
A visceral story of pregnancy and domestic mayhem…[full of] raw primal maternal energy. – Libby Purves * The Times *
BEST NON-FICTION OF 2020: Clover Stroud charts the highs and lows of motherhood in all their deep, dark glory. – Sarra Manning * RED Magazine *
Rare are the books about motherhood, rarer still; the true, the generous, tender, resonant ones. This is that book. I loved it and I love Clover’s voice. * Sophie Dahl *

Clover Stroud is a writer and journalist, writing regularly for the Sunday Times, the Guardian and the Saturday and Sunday Telegraph, among others. She also hosts a popular podcast called Tiny Acts of Bravery. Her first book, The Wild Other, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Her critically acclaimed second book, My Wild and Sleepless Nights- A Mother’s Story, and third book, The Red of My Blood- A Death and Life Story, were instant Sunday Times bestsellers and rated ‘best books of the year’. She is currently living in Washington DC with her husband and the youngest three of her five children.

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