‘Charlotte Beeston's gorgeous debut novel is a wonderfully intelligent and sensitively handled portrait of grief. Literary in the best sense (language matters) the novel is full of incidental pleasures and deserves to be widely read.’ — Andrew Miller, Costa Award Winner author of Pure
'Stella and Julia’s individual meditations on their deep losses combine to form an emotionally intelligent, thought-provoking portrait of grief and the mother-daughter bond. It’s raw and compelling and brilliant on letting life in and finding slivers of hope in the darkest situations. It stayed with me long after I finished it.’ — Sara Lawrence, Best debut novels of the month, Daily Mail
In present-day London, Stella, not yet thirty, is working through the grief of losing her mother to cancer. Estranged from her father, unemployed and single, she is increasingly isolated despite her regular therapy appointments.
In Edwardian England, Julia longs for solitude as she mourns her elder daughter, who succumbed to a mysterious illness after her return from a photographic expedition to the Sri Lankan interior.
Charlotte Beeston’s meditative debut novel recounts in delicate, achingly lucid prose the parallel lives of two women a century apart, connected across time by a haunting image. Each, in her own way, seeks a path to navigate the ebb and flow of the grieving process through the permanence of love, friendship, and art.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'Stella and Julia’s individual meditations on their deep losses combine to form an emotionally intelligent, thought-provoking portrait of grief and the mother-daughter bond. It’s raw and compelling and brilliant on letting life in and finding slivers of hope in the darkest situations. It stayed with me long after I finished it.’ — Sara Lawrence, Best debut novels of the month, Daily Mail
In present-day London, Stella, not yet thirty, is working through the grief of losing her mother to cancer. Estranged from her father, unemployed and single, she is increasingly isolated despite her regular therapy appointments.
In Edwardian England, Julia longs for solitude as she mourns her elder daughter, who succumbed to a mysterious illness after her return from a photographic expedition to the Sri Lankan interior.
Charlotte Beeston’s meditative debut novel recounts in delicate, achingly lucid prose the parallel lives of two women a century apart, connected across time by a haunting image. Each, in her own way, seeks a path to navigate the ebb and flow of the grieving process through the permanence of love, friendship, and art.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"An ode to grief, Charlotte Beeston's The White Flower renders the physicality of loss and yearning in prose so very exquisite." - Cauvery Madhavan
"Charlotte Beeston's gorgeous debut novel is a wonderfully intelligent and sensitively handled portrait of grief. Literary in the best sense (language matters) the novel is full of incidental pleasures and deserves to be widely read." - Andrew Miller
"Sensitively and tenderly written, The White Flower performs the mother-daughter bond as a loving tug-of-war between present and past, forgetting and remembering, loss and joyful reparation." - Michèle Roberts
"Charlotte Beeston's gorgeous debut novel is a wonderfully intelligent and sensitively handled portrait of grief. Literary in the best sense (language matters) the novel is full of incidental pleasures and deserves to be widely read." - Andrew Miller
"Sensitively and tenderly written, The White Flower performs the mother-daughter bond as a loving tug-of-war between present and past, forgetting and remembering, loss and joyful reparation." - Michèle Roberts
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