All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett is about the curative power of plants when dealing with heartbreaking experiences.

I’m not normally a big fan of memoirs but as I love herbs and healing plants this book intrigued me. I was so happy to read it and will definitely be buying a paper copy to read over again. I’d definitely recommend it.

This is a beautifully written memoir about the grief suffered from the loss of a sister, but also about the author’s attempts to create a garden with her young son. It is a very raw, emotional book and so honest. The author has a wonderful way of expressing her internal thoughts and feelings and I really felt like I was there with her. It is a book full of both heartache and uplifting moments and I never felt like it pulled me down because it is such a hopeful book.

I loved the contrast between the emotion and the encyclopaedic introductions of each chapter as we learn about a new plant. I recommend this book to anyone who has suffered with grief but also to mothers and people who love to learn about nature. Especially those who want to read about how effective nature is at healing and uniting.

With thanks to Netgalley and John Murray Press for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.

I liked the format but each chapter was quite short and I expected a bit more substance on the actual plants. The commentary on grief was very moving though and I enjoyed the writing which felt poetic but warm.

What I most enjoyed about All My Wild Mothers were the descriptions of plants (ok, what some might call weeds) at the opening of each chapter. The various names, uses and array of intriguing facts delighted and sent me off to google those I did not know. What a fresh and delightful way to begin each section.

Victoria Bennett is a skilled wordsmith and made poetry of her life story. I feel certain this is the first book of a budding career as a writer. Her tale is a painful one with grief in the wake of passing family members intermingled with the joys of motherhood. Threading in nature and nurturing a love of the wild world in her son was a glorious, hope-inspiring journey.

I share quite a few things with the author: we have had a child at the same age(albeit it was my second, but due to a huge 14 year gap it does feel as if it's my first :D), I have shared the same worry for the wellbeing of my unborn child, but also the worry of having to deal with a potentially life long condition clouding our lives; I have home educated my first born and we very much considering doing the same for our second one; I am a bit of an amateurish gardener, having had a raised bed for some year now!. Sharing all this with Victoria made me really feel her heartbreak, to the point where I started imagining how it would be to suddenly lose my sister. I have had to rein in tears as I was reading, countless times! And saying that All My Wild Mothers is a raw and tearjerker read is an understatement!

I really loved the idea of the "wild" garden and I particularly enjoyed reading the bits at the start of each chapter about the different plants, their meaning and uses in history. I found this a unique and very enjoyable way to write a memoir. Plus I really love reading about people that are not necessary famous. I always found their lives are so rich and Victoria's like is indeed full of depths and heartbreak worth reading about!

This is dreamy and beautifully written and incredibly powerful as a memoir of grief. It was also a bit confusing at various points - I struggled with several of the transitions - but that honestly may have been partially contributed to by the clunky formatting of the e-ARC on my Kindle, so it's hard to know if I would have felt the same with the properly-formatted manuscript.

I loved this book, a kind of hybrid memoir that combined a passion for herbal folklore and a creative project, the building of an apothecary garden in a location where there were many obstacles to overcome, environmental and human, while exploring and healing from the loss of a loved one.

It reminded me a little of the experience of reading Helen Macdonald’s H is For Hawk, another memoir where the author takes on challenging project while navigating the tumultuous waves of grief – in that case, training a goshawk.

The memoir began at a moment in the author’s life when there was an unexpected death in the family; grief and coping with it, learning how to manage its lingering presence, is one of the themes she reflects on throughout the book.

At the time of this initial event, she is pregnant with her first child and as the story continues, her son becomes as much a part of the narrative as the author herself.

Victoria Bennett grew up in a large family, one that due to her father’s career, relocated countries often, that fragmented when some of the children were sent to boarding school, and even when they did settle down, did not partake in community life. They were self contained.

Used to living in places where they were outsiders, it became a way of being, even in their country of origin, England. In a conservative rural community, her mother wore hot-pants and homemade kaftans, had an art studio in the shed and had once offered to liven up a craft show with an exhibition of nudes.

Due to circumstance, Bennett and her husband move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria, built over what was an industrial site, a barren, rubble-filled, now rule-restricted, wasteland.

Mother and son slowly repurpose their backyard, building an apothecary garden – a construction of permaculture beauty, an appreciation of nature, an alternative education – yet encounter resistance, judgement, complaint and obstacle as subscribers to a more authoritarian rule, attempt to oppress or stamp out their initiative, unable to see the bigger picture of a more sustainable, kinder way of living in the shared world we inhabit.

Bennett’s quest, to build an apothecary garden and educate (home-school) her son, was in part, an effort to integrate into the community, to overcome an inherited sense of not belonging, a deconditioning of learned ways. She overcomes anxiety, often lead by her son’s enthusiasm, to become more participative.

Despite her reticence, she had been raised by a feminist, ‘my mother was fierce about being fair,’ her sisters were outspoken, when Bennett discovers that her efforts to create something sustainable are being undermined by neighbours, she sets out to inform and educate them all.

“When we first moved onto the estate, the garden was a patch of newly sown grass, a thin layer of topsoil, and several metres of rock, rubble, and industrial hardcore. With no money, and only the weeds we found growing on the building site, my young son and I set out to see what we could grow. What was once a wasteland, became a haven for wildlife, and a balm for the body and soul. “

For a memoir that navigated emotions, it had a good solid structure within which to contain the outpourings – each chapter began with a different plant, starting with the intriguing medieval, magical perception of it, including stunning yet simple black & white woodcut illustrations, the medicinal properties, a bit of folklore and where it might be found. There followed a meandering through events, memories and reflections from Bennett’s life, that often ventured off from an aspect of the plant’s curative powers.

All My Wild Mothers is also a reflection on motherhood, of one woman’s experience, given her own inclinations, personality and the effect of being the youngest in a family of six children. It is a celebration of the power and reward of maternal nurturing, of focusing on the development of a child according to their individual needs,

It is sensitively narrated, introspective and a tribute in particular to her sisters and her mother and a celebration of her son, for all that he teaches her, that he reflects back to her, due to the way she parents him and the way he in turn reminds her what it is to be a child, the gifts they offer having been nurtured, loved and allowed to grow into themselves authentically. He is a less conditioned mini human than most and Bennett’s articulate expression and capturing of his innocent yet profound utterances are a gift to all who read her prose.

Children can teach and remind us of so much that is simple and good in life, sadly conditioned out of us by the effect of a societal system that squashes it before it can have enough of a chance to flourish.

I absolutely loved this quiet book, that celebrates the wisdom of small children, nurtured through the early years and the symbiosis of mother and child.

Highly Recommended.

“What is grief, if not love persevering.” WandaVision

I think that gardening and nature are the best way to heal and moving with our life. This is a story of moving but it's also the story of discovering gardening and how it can change your life.
I love the style of writing, the great setting and the poignant story. The author is an excellent storyteller.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

I felt a visceral connection to this breathtakingly beautiful memoir, the best I’ve ever read. Not only does the author write exquisitely and evocatively and quote from one of my favourite childhood books, ‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett, she also has Hypermobility Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, like me.

Although grief, loss, illness and struggle are the sad backbone of this book, it is fleshed out by the joyous healing power of nature and the wild mothering it offers Bennett and her wise beyond his years son, the comfort and support of the author’s “wild women” friends, and a plethora of profound insights, such as:

“Sometimes, we try so hard to cut out the things that do not fit the idealised garden of this life – the loneliness, the loss, the struggle of it all – that we forget to see the beauty that it holds. And it is so beautiful. So, plant the seed. Find the small thing worth the gift of your hope. Whatever else comes, trust that it will grow, even if you do not see it flower.”

This memoir dances back and forth across different timelines as childhood, family problems past and present, and dealing with grief and loss are interspersed with fascinating information on apothecary wild flowers and herbs and their uses, mingled with gratitude for it all. These lines really spoke to me:

“… in the end, all we have is life, and death, and all the mundane miracles we almost miss between. Even though we weep, we must still give thanks for the moments that we have, and sing.”

This is a book to take your time with, read again and again to savour every precious sentence, delight in the dexterity of the text and the moving accounts of overcoming grief and loss, marvel at the delicious insights, and emerge wiser to life itself. Grateful thanks to John Murray Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

A unique memoir and so beautifully written with an original new voice in nature writing. It brings together family, gardening, plants, and herbs in a unique way with succinct and lyrical prose. Highly recommended.

I adored this book. It blew my mind that out of something so sad, something so hopeful was born. There is a real sense of the need for patience and time in this writing, and a willingness to find beauty and healing in the tiniest seemingly most unpromising places. It’s gorgeous, generous writing with real heart, a strong sense of place and joy.

This is a wonderful book - lyrical, tender and deeply moving. I was absolutely spellbound by it. Poetic, compelling, heartbreaking yet hopeful, it’s beautifully written and I am quite in awe of Victoria Bennett’s strength and resilience, and her determination to create something beautiful out of life’s inevitable grief and harshness. And her young son sounds like the most adorable, wise little boy.

Each chapter is named for a wild plant, or medicinal weed, its stories and healing properties, and then what follows is a recollection from Bennett's life, either in the present where she, her husband and son are trying to make a wild apothecary garden in the yard of their council estate house and having to manage her son's diabetes, the prejudice and bureaucracy one has to endure when one is dependent on the welfare system, and her elderly mother's recent terminal diagnosis; or at various points in the past where Bennett reflects on loves, losses and times of change and growth that were the seeds of the life she is now living. "In the broken ground of grief, I just wanted to see what could grow," she says in her author's note.

There are so many wonderful sentences and images in this book. These are a few of my favourites:

"Plant the seed. Find the small thing worth the gift of your hope. Whatever else comes, trust that it will grow, even if you do not see it flower."

"Life and death have no balance sheet, or fair-promise to keep. It is not luck, good or bad. It is as simple as this: sometimes, terrible things happen."

"In this one act, he has learnt that society has one rule for those who have wealth, and another those who not."

"I did not know where I could belong. In that lonely space, I dared to ask the question: why if the thing that makes us a weed in someone else's perfect garden is the very gift that makes us shine?"

All My Wild Mothers is a deeply moving meditation on what it means to be resilient in a world that can be very unfair and what it means to carve out a space for beauty and cultivate a love of and reverence for nature when we live in a world that is all about "progress", wealth accumulation, regulations and profits.

I cannot recommend this book more highly to everyone but particularly to gardeners, mothers, poets, nature lovers and to those seeking a gentler yet wilder path.

Thank you to the author, Two Roads/John Murray Press and Netgalley for an ARC.

I don't think I will ever find enough words to express how profoundly beautiful this book is.
A real life story expressing love and respect for nature. Sharing what loss and grief feels like and how nature can be our guide in turbulent times. Victoria and her little son share the most beautiful bond which often left me in tears. It is so loving, gentle and full of wise words of wisdom, especially coming from a four year old.
My favourite line was - "Our lives are ringed by the years, and their seasons. To survive them, there must be a little hardening. Keep watch, though, and you will see there will also also be the return of spring."

I feel that in years to come I will come back to this book as it was packed with so much knowledge on plants. Each chapter started with a new plant followed by a memory from Victoria's life.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for such wonderful read. I enjoyed this very much so.

There is a lot to love about this book. It is very well paced, for one thing, so that past and future alternate, and the ‘now’ remains, however painfully it is held on to, so that progress can be made.

She can summarise, so that history is there, but not dry; she can write poetically about life; she can describe vividly what it is like to be one of the ‘have nots’ and yet make a wonderful living space, to care for her family and wildlife.

The illustrations are gorgeous.

Grief is a strange process, and her various griefs and losses are documented, including being 7 months pregnant while trying to process the loss of a sister, is almost unimaginable. And yet this is not a sad book. It is full of life and hope, drawing on the wisdom of her ‘wild mothers’ both plant and human. Her choice of plants is a little odd in relation to the chapters but this is not a great problem.

Joy and beauty come from living things, human and plants, and from family, and she describes them beautifully.

All My Wild Mothers is in my top five reads of the year; such a stunning in-depth and personal book that is part memoir, part an introduction guide to seeds, wild plants and their uses in traditional healing.
I felt such a deep connection to the author, her young son and their wild garden that they nurtured from seed and soil during turbulent times of grief and uncertainty. Defying norms, rules and expectations their garden grows providing joy, escapism, a classroom, a way to heal and remember, and so much more. Showing us how compassion, freedom and acceptance can be found by rediscovering our roots within nature and connecting with our wild mothers. I adored every seed and every chapter down in this graciously honest and beautiful book.

Lyrically intimate emotional raw real.The author draws us into her world her and her husbands struggles to make a living,Her life as a caregiver to her young son who has health issues.She shares the death of her sister in a canoe accident the pain and heartache.I was drawn into the authors story her life .Each chapter starts wirh a description of a plant a unique wonderful read,#netgalley#johnmurraypress

'All My Wild Mothers' is almost unbearably beautiful, and I didn't want it to finish.

This is an easy book to read, with many short chapters, each of which begins with a wildflower and a description of its medicinal or nutritional uses. The narrative loosely follows Bennett as she tries to live with the death of her sister, and raise her son well, with forays into the past and her often tumultuous - though love-filled - family life.

Two things make the book truly superb: firstly, its unflinching honesty, and secondly, its prose. The prose is never saccharine, though it could easily have been in another writer's hands. I ached for Bennett and her family, I smiled with her in happy moments. I simply didn't want to step out of her shoes.

(With thanks to John Murray Press and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)