The White Flower

A Best Debut Novel of the Year (Daily Mail) – “Raw and compelling”Incontemporary and Edwardian London, two women are grieving the loss of a lovedone. Stella, turning thirty, is increasingly isolated after her mother died ofcancer; Julia, surrounded by friends, is longing for solitude as she mourns herdaughter, a young photographer who died after her return from an expedition inthe jungle of Sri Lanka. Mysteriouslyconnected across time and space by a haunting image, each explores, in her ownvoice, the complexities of the mother-daughter bond and family estrangement. From the banks of the Thames in present-day south-east London to the coast ofEast Devon and the Sri Lankan rainforest a hundred years earlier, CharlotteBeeston’s delicate debut novel moves with aching lucidity between tendernessand raw emotion. Charting the ebb and flow of the grieving process, The White Flower captures the impact of loneliness on the femalepsyche, and the permanence of love, art and friendship.