The Iceberg

October 12, 2015
In this profoundly moving memoir, author/artist Coutts recounts the two years leading up to her husband’s death after he is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of 53. During these years, from 2008 to 2010, Coutts and her husband, Tom Lubbock, who was the chief art critic for the U.K.’s Independent, are in the midst of their careers while raising Ev, their two-year-old son. The disease throws their lives into a tailspin, with daily activities taking on a new and poignant urgency. Ironically, the tumor affects the area of the brain associated with speech and language; as a writer, words are Lubbock’s passion. With great care and craft, Coutts shares her husband’s transition from successful wordsmith to a man who can no longer speak even his wife’s name. As Lubbock begins to lose words, Ev is embarking on his own path toward the acquisition of language, and the intertwining journeys of father and son make this intricate tale of life and death all the more powerful; in the same day, for instance, Coutts shops for a nursing home or hospice in which her husband will die and a facility for her child to begin primary school. Coutts covers many intimate aspects of the dying process, one of the most stirring of which is the inevitable metamorphosis of a cohesive, loving family unit from three to two. Despite the somber topic, readers will be drawn to Coutts’s exquisite portrayal of her husband’s final years.

Starred review from November 1, 2015
A debut memoir about losing a husband to cancer. In her riveting, harrowing chronicle, British artist and writer Coutts (Fine Art/Goldsmiths Coll.) recounts three years during which her husband, Independent chief art critic Tom Lubbock, succumbed to brain cancer. Lubbock's own reflections on his illness appeared in that publication just two months before he died in January 2011. Coutts' story, therefore, focuses less on her husband's experience than on her own: as caretaker, mother to their irrepressible toddler son, and intermediary with friends, family, nurses, and doctors. Her immediate reactions were shock and fear. "We discover, or rather I do," she writes, "that you cannot hold a state of fear for an extended time. Fear is a peak, not a plateau. Shock is a drug and at first it feels pure and elevated, yes. The unreal keeps all exalted." But that exaltation quickly dissipated, and Coutts was left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and, as time went on, angry. As Tom underwent two surgeries and repeated chemotherapy and radiation, she strove to make "an intellectual accommodation with death." In emails to their many friends, which punctuate this poignant memoir, the couple admitted that the illness "affected us differently. It's been a lot of strain for Marion, less so in some ways for Tom." However, Tom's upbeat personality only masked his obsession; he told Marion that he thought about his cancer all the time, "though," she remarks, "you would never know it." Tom eventually became physically weak, his mobility was compromised, he contracted pneumonia repeatedly, and convulsions recurred. Because the tumor was in the area of speech and language, it soon affected his ability to write and to communicate, and Coutts added to her tasks the frustrating job of interpreter. In the last months, when he was in pain, she could only guess "at its extent and urgency and guess what we can do to alleviate it." A poetic and moving chronicle of loss.

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November 15, 2015
For the two years leading up to her husband's death from a brain tumor, Coutts kept their many friends updated with a steady stream of positive, factual e-mails. But like an iceberg, most of her private feelings and struggles were submerged. In this painfully honest, beautifully written memoir, she exposes her fears and heartbreak as she watches her art-critic husband begin to loose first his physical stamina and, finally, his grasp of language. As he declines, their two-year-old son, Ev, blossoms. His discovery of words and meanings becomes even more poignant as Tom struggles to express his thoughts. Friends and family are supportive, but the ups and downs of the illness are sometimes overwhelming. Coutts fights to keep Tom in a positive setting when he can no longer live at home and works to keep him connected with nature, family, friends, and writing. Surprisingly, in the midst of the sorrow, Coutts bravely celebrates each day the three have together. Uplifting rather than depressing, this moving story will touch readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2015

British artist Coutts chronicles the illness and death of her husband, critic Tom Lubbock, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2008 and eventually took his own life. A parallel account details her efforts to raise their two-year-old son, who was just learning to speak as his father's voice shut down. Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize and short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book Award.

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