My enormous thanks to Victoria Bennett for arranging for All My Wild Mothers to be sent to me well over a year ago. With the paperback publication looming I thought it really was time I got round to reading All My Wild Mothers and sharing my review! I’m delighted to do that today.

All My Wild Mothers is out from Two Roads in paperback on 1st February 2024 and is available for purchase through the links here.

All My Wild Mothers

An intimate memoir of motherhood, herbal folklore All My Wild Mothers is more than just a memoir. It’s a handbook on survival, and a testimony to radical hope.

At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett learns her sister has died in a canoeing accident. In that moment, her life changes.

Five years later, and struggling with the demands of motherhood, grief and full-time care, Victoria and her family move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria. Here, in the rubble of a former industrial site, she and her young son begin to grow a wild apothecary garden: daisy, for resilience; dandelion, for strength against adversity; sow thistle, to lift melancholy; and borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.

Stone by stone, seed by seed, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite what is broken, but because of it.

All My Wild Mothers is a profound exploration of grief, identity, and rediscovery; a testament that life and love persists, even when we think all is lost.

My Review of All My Wild Mothers

A memoir of plants and grief.

All My Wild Mothers is an astounding book. It’s as unlike a conventional memoir as can be possible and yet it provides the most perfect insight into the life and character of Victoria Bennett. 

The prose is simply beautiful. Weaving the past into a clear chronology as Victoria Bennett and her son create a wasteland garden, All My Wild Mothers is rich with detail, technicolour in vivid description and yet equally pared down and concise so that simple sentences convey the deepest emotions. Every sense is here between the pages of All My Wild Mothers, but somehow there isn’t a jarring note or an extraneous syllable to snag the profound and sensitive writing. It is as if Victoria Bennett has laid herself bare with exquisite skill and honesty.

All My Wild Mothers might initially be an intimate and affecting exploration of Victoria Bennett’s personal grief over lost children and her sister’s accidental death, and later, her mother’s passing, but it also has a universal quality too. The wonderful drawings, the botanical references and the iterative metaphor of the ability of both nature and humankind to rewild and regenerate all add up into a book that is felt every bit as much as it is read. 

Consequently, as well as raw grief there are so many identifiable and relatable situations and emotions here, from frustration to anger but equally there is hope, and deep, deep love – especially in the author’s relationship with her son. As a result All My wild Mothers gives the reader permission to identify and accept their own feelings and to understand themselves better even as they understand the author completely.

To any one of us who has lived, or grieved, or planted a seed or admired the tenacity of weeds, All My Wild Mothers is a siren call of hope. Reading it gives a sense of belonging, an understanding not only of the adaptability and resilience of Nature, but of human nature. Whatever the wastelands of our past, our relationships and the difficulties of our present situations, through sharing her story Victoria Bennett shows we can not just survive, but that, like a small lost seed, we can thrive. 

I thought All My Wild Mothers was a wonderful book. 

About Victoria Bennett

Victoria Bennett was born in Oxfordshire in 1971. A poet and author, her writing has previously received a Northern Debut Award, a Northern Promise Award, the Andrew Waterhouse Award, and has been longlisted for the Penguin WriteNow programme and the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for under-represented voices. She founded Wild Women Press in 1999 to support rural women writers in her community, and since 2018 has curated the global Wild Woman Web project, an inclusive online space focusing on nature, connection, and creativity. When not juggling writing, full-time care, and genetic illness, she can be found where the wild weeds grow. All My Wild Mothers is her debut memoir.

For further information, visit Victoria’s website, follow her on Twitter/X @VikBeeWyld and find Victoria on Instagram and Facebook.