The Giant on the Skyline

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

What is it that makes a home? What is a home without the roots that tie you to a place? What is a home when a family is split?

Clover's eldest children are leaving home for university. Her husband Pete's work is in America. The only way for Clover and the younger children to live with him is to uproot, leave their rural life near the ancient Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and move to Washington DC. Forced to leave the home she loves and consider these questions, Clover sets out to explore the place where she lives, walk the Ridgway, understand a little of the history of her landscape and work out why it is that it is so hard for her to go. In doing so she paints a beautifully layered portrait of family, community and of belonging in a landscape that has drawn people to it for generation after generation.

'Clover Stroud is a fearless explorer of the human heart, and a writer of incomparable grace and passion.' Elizabeth Gilbert

'Clover's writing is sensationally beautiful.' Laura Cumming

'Stroud's writing is knife-sharp, beautiful and profound.' Madeline Miller

©2024 Clover Stroud (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • Stroud writes gloriously… a deeply thoughtful exploration of the meaning of home and belonging.

    i News

  • One of the books we’re most looking forward to in 2024: I’m a huge fan of Clover Stroud’s writing and this memoir about home and what it means to us sounds fascinating.

    Good Housekeeping

  • Stroud captures raw emotion, capturing themes of adventure, grief and the healing power of nature. Her latest book is a heartfelt meditation on what makes a home.

    Woman & Home

  • Clover Stroud is expert at bringing her reader right to the heart of her longing. Her writing is intimate and warm, honest and generous. A true memoirist, she looks to people and place as her canvas, in this case the psychic and physical hold of the landscape and what we call home. The Giant on the Skyline is timeless and yet firmly rooted in time, magical and mysterious and yet earthy and sensual. It is full of personality, humour and heart and I did not want it to end.

    Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father

  • In this new giant of a book, perhaps Clover’s most profound and moving, and unquestionably her most soaringly beautiful, Clover Stroud confronts the wrench from a place that might define her and shows how the resounding power of love tethers the soul.

    Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake

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