Tulip by Celine Marchbank. First edition (2016). First impression. Large format hardback in fine condition. No markings. The book appears to be unread. Please see pictures. Any questions please get in touch. About Tulip from Sean O'Hagan for The Guardian Tulip is not, as Marchbank points out, a record of her mother’s death. It is more an inventory of the quotidian details that can define even the most painful situations but are soon forgotten when we finally emerge from the strange hinterland we enter when attending someone who is seriously ill. That heightened but hazy place is evoked throughout in quiet imagery – light falling on a medication chart, raindrops on a windowpane, her mother’s sewing box – but also in portraits of her mother as her illness takes its toll. It is a determinedly honest evocation of a terrible time. The narrative shifts in tone again towards the end with a landscape of grey sky above a thicket of trees. “Looking out of her bedroom window, I realised this is the start of the first day of my life without her,” reads the caption. A few pages later, a snapshot of the Guardian obituary page reveals that her mum was, among other things, a “doyenne of counterculture and the restaurant revolution”. One life contains many lives. Related Links So, more books by Celine Marchbank you can find here. Also, for more books by Dewi Lewis please click here.
