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The winner of the Wellcome Book Prize 2015, The Iceberg is an extraordinary memoir which leaves an indelible mark on all who read it.

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In 2008 the art critic Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The tumour was located in the area controlling speech and language, and would eventually rob him of the ability to speak. He died early in 2011. Marion Coutts was his wife.

In short bursts of beautiful, textured prose, Coutts describes the eighteen months leading up to her partner´s death. This book is an account of a family unit, man, woman, young child, under assault, and how the three of them fought to keep it intact.

Written with extraordinary narrative force and power, The Iceberg is almost shocking in its rawness. It charts the deterioration of Tom´s speech even as it records the developing language of his child. Fury, selfishness, grief, indignity and impotence are all examined and brought to light.Yet out of this comes a rare story about belonging, an ´adventure of being and dying´. This book is a celebration of each other, friends, family, art, work, love and language.

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The book´s truth is so pure and compressed, as though Coutts had condensed the coal of her experience into a diamond. Encountering it is like a near-death experience, at once traumatic and profoundly, permanently illuminating. Love itself is in these pages: not a representation of love, but love, pure and simple. The book reeks of it. New York Times

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Marion Coutts is an artist and writer. She wrote the introduction to Tom Lubbock´s memoir Until Further Notice, I am Alive, published by Granta in 2012. She is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and lives in London with her son.

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