A finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Award

A memoir quite unlike any other. It has the strength of an arrow: taut, spiked, quavering, working to its fatal conclusion...an extraordinary story told in an extraordinary way. --The Sunday Times

The most heartbreaking memoir of the year. --Independent on Sunday

Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize, and finalist for every major nonfiction award in the UK, including the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Award, The Iceberg is artist and writer Marion Coutts' astonishing memoir; an adventure of being and dying and a compelling, poetic meditation on family, love, and language.

In 2008, Tom Lubbach, the chief art critic for The Independent was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The Iceberg is his wife, Marion Coutts', fierce, exquisite account of the two years leading up to his death. In spare, breathtaking prose, Coutts conveys the intolerable and, alongside their two year old son Ev--whose language is developing as Tom's is disappearing--Marion and Tom lovingly weather the storm together. In short bursts of exquisitely textured prose, The Iceberg becomes a singular work of art and an uplifting and universal story of endurance in the face of loss.

Praise for THE ICEBERG:

Truly extraordinary...one of the most haunting and achingly honest explorations of grief in recent memory...elegantly composed...like any great work of art, The Iceberg doesn't merely represent what it sets out to depict; it deftly communicates the emotional truth behind it. --Mary Elizabeth Williams, Los Angeles Times

This book is about love and witness...the pared-down quality of this memoir adds universality and is part of its tensile strength...Its cover should be stamped this way: 'Contains not one glib sentence.' --Dwight Garner New York Times

The most moving book I have read in some time...It is a harrowing read, as you would expect, but also beautifully written and intensely powerful. --Bill Bryson New York Times Book Review, By the Book

Profoundly moving...the intertwining journeys of father and son make this intricate tale of life and death all the more powerful...exquisite. --Publishers Weekly

Riveting...poignant memoir...A poetic and moving chronicle of loss. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

An extraordinary memoir... one of the most astonishing books. I was transfixed by it. [Coutts'] work is marvelously wrought and quite experimental, yet says very blunt things. --Helen MacDonald, Guernica

A fierce love letter-cum-elegy... This is far more than just another book about grief. --Marina Warner, Observer

A memoir quite unlike any other. It has the strength of an arrow: taut, spiked, quavering, working to its fatal conclusion...an extraordinary story told in an extraordinary way. --Sunday Times

The most heartbreaking memoir of the year. --Independent on Sunday

A book that clearly had to be written...to be read by anyone who ever pauses to consider our mortality. --Sunday Telegraph

The Iceberg is mesmerizing, harrowing, and radiant... it is impossible to put it down. --Daily Mail (UK)

An extraordinary vigil of a book, a work of art. --Observer

Unflinching yet uplifting...[Coutts is] a chronicler of what it means to be human. --Financial Times

The writing is lyrical, textured, perfectly paced; the sentences short so that we feel Coutts's moments of panic, her quickened heartbeat... [A] startlingly beautiful and inspiring pioneer text. --Independent

[Coutts] chooses her words with such beautiful scrupulousness, never twisting or turning the knife of her story to exact our pity or admiration; her thought is like sensation, her descriptions of feeling are often like notes for a visual work... Her book is a homage to an exceptional man; it's also the work of an exceptional woman artist. --Guardian

Marion Coutts' account of living with her husband's illness and death is wise, moving and beautifully constructed. Reading it, you have the sense of something truly unique being brought into the world - it stays with you for a long time after. --Bill Bryson (Wellcome Prize citation)

Extraordinary... Not quite like any other bereavement memoir. --Evening Standard

Searing, shocking, unflinching, profoundly moving. --Spectator