by Charlotte Beeston

Published: 7 November 2024

“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

Stella is turning 30 and lives alone in an apartment on the banks of the Thames in south-east London.  Her mental health has unravelled after her mother’s death from cancer, leaving her unemployed and isolated.  

 In Edwardian England, Julia is surrounded by friends but longing for solitude. She is mourning her elder daughter, who has died in her twenties from a mysterious illness soon after her return from an expedition to photograph the jungle of Sri Lanka.

Julia and Stella’s stories are obliquely connected across space and time by the image of a white flower. Charlotte Beeston’s debut charts the ebb and flow of the grieving process, explored through the prisms of memory, imagination and photography. In elegant, spare prose, The White Flower captures the impact of loneliness on the female psyche, and the permanence of love, art and friendship.

Paperback original with flaps
168 pages
180 x 120 mm
ISBN 978-1-7397783-8-5

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