Beautiful story writing didn’t really flow for me. I know it was a real story which is why I found the writing odd for not flowing

An interesting and quiet read. Takes patience but was worthwhile. Laura Cumming’s book is built around the brief disappearance in the 1920s of her ‘grandmother’ from her Lincolnshire home at the age of three. It captures well the life of the village and elsewhere at that time. I found the earlier part of the book absorbing as Laura Cumming explored the lives of her grandparents and the relationship between themselves and the child.

I don’t like doing a negative review but this book was not for me

It just didn’t flow like I would have liked it to

The blurb on the back of the book makes this sound a fabulous read. Unfortunately I struggled to get into the book - it wanders off the topic on several occasions & I couldn't always tell whether it was Laura or her mother I was reading about. The unravelling of what actually happened on that day & the background to it though was fascinating & I'm pleased I kept reading.

This true story is a beautiful rendition of Laura's mother's life as told through photos, art and an ocean of research. I cried alot whilst reading this even though I can only imagine what Elizabeth felt. Laura has written a book that is so evocative and speaks to even the toughest of hearts. It was a privilege to read.

This is a biographical work in which the author writes about her mother’s life, accompanied by excerpts of her mother’s own writing. While being contemplative and meandering, the book covers a large number of ideas in a short space, ruminating on, among other things, how we relate to the past and our own personal histories, the different ways a photo can be read and how they influence our memory, the legacy of upbringing and the nature of identity. One particularly interesting aspect is the contemplation of what happens when secrets are kept and stories fabricated in a small community where everyone knows the truth but the person being lied to. This book will be particularly worth reading to anybody with an interest in painting, with several piece of art discussed by the author as part of her framework for approaching and making sense of the past.
The book is a little too meditative and lacks momentum. An important incident in her mother’s early life is recounted at the outset of the book and set up as more seismic than it actually was. That being said, this was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking read which pushes at the boundaries of conventional biography.

Laura Cumming’s Love Letter to Her Mother

I was a little skeptical due to the subtitle, which reads like a tabloid soundbite aimed at selling multiple copies of sensationalist content.

I wasn’t interested in reading a ghostwritten drama tragedy, but the understated cover I first saw here and the simplicity of the new title, suggested a narrative that might make a motif out of a sandy beach.

I loved it. The opening chapter sets the scene, recounting the story of a little girl of three years playing on the beach near her mother and her shocking disappearance. It is a familiar scene, the beach being down a path not far from their home, the tide going out, the sea half a mile in the distance, her mother Vera inattentive for a moment sees nothing.

"One minute she was there, barefoot and absorbed, spade in hand, seconds later she was taken off the sands at the village of Chapel St Leonards apparently without anybody noticing at all. Thus my mother was kidnapped."

The little girl, Betty, was found five days later and returned to her family. Laura Cumming learns about this event in her mother’s life many years later, something her mother has no recollection of, a mystery unsolved, yet it is a turning point in her life explaining why she never went to the beach or left the front yard of their house or played with other children from school.

"Her life began with a false start and continued with a long chain of deceptions, abetted by acts of communal silence so determined they have continued into my life too. The mystery of what happened, how it changed her, and her own children, has run through my days ever since I first heard of the incident on the beach thirty years ago."

Rather than seek to resolve the mystery, the book introduces us to the main characters like a novel, including black and white photos, not collected in the middle of the book but placed amidst the text where we read about them.

They are described in a way that makes me flick back to look at them again and again, and I realise this isn’t just a daughter telling a story about her mother, this is an art historian studying a family portrait looking for clues – and finding answers.

"To my surprise the truth turns out to pivot on images as much as words. To discover it has involved looking harder, looking closer, paying more attention to the smallest of visual details – the clues in a dress, the distinctive slant of a copperplate hand, the miniature faces in the family album."

She poses many unanswered questions about the events that occurred and seeks answers in the photos she possesses, assembling evidence with the assurity of a forensic expert. Her mother was an artist and taught her how to notice and remember images seen in a museum long before telephones could record them. It has become the way she thinks.

A sense of place is created through references to Dutch painters, there being a resemblance in this landscape to Holland.

"The flattest of all English counties, Lincolnshire is also the least altered by time, or mankind, and still appears nearly medieval in its ancient maze of dykes and paths. It faces the Netherlands across the water and on a tranquil day it sometimes feels as if you could walk straight across to the rival flatness of Holland."

Characters are pondered deeply through photos and family paintings, the author finding inspiration and clues even in more famous works that help us understand the narrative power of an image. By the time I got to reading about Degas’s The Bellelli Family, I had to put the book down and seek the painting out to see more clearly the father’s revealing hand placement mentioned and the escaping dog. What an incredible painting!

I was completely hooked, even looking up to see which museum this painting hangs, and what luck, it’s in the musée d’Orsay in Paris, at least I live in the right country to visit it.

Serendipitously, that same day, Laura Cumming wrote an article in the Observer about the collective yearning for visiting art exhibitions; for Velázquez in Edinburgh, Monet in Glasgow, Goya in Cambridge, Rembrandt at Kenwood House, Poussin in Dulwich, Gwen John in Sheffield.

Cumming is aided by her mother’s writing, the photographs and a little by the visits they would make back to the place of her birth, but she holds out on the big reveal on what really happened until midway into the book, by which time the reader is increasingly desperate have confirmed what she is beginning to suspect.

For my twenty-first birthday, my mother gave me the gift I most wanted: the tale of her early life. This memoir is short, ending with her teenage years, but its writing carries so much of her grace, her truthful eloquence and witness, her artist’s way of looking at the world.

"She was fifty-six when she sat down to write and still knew nothing about the kidnap, or her existence before it, except that she had been born in a mill house in 1926; or rather as it seemed to her, that some other baby had arrived there."

Once Cumming learns the truth, there are a roller coaster of emotions spilling onto the page, from anger, disbelief and outrage to sadness, regret and finally some semblance of compassion for those involved. On the continued collective silence though, a protective gesture to cover-up shame, that distorted her mother’s life, she says “in a way, I can’t forgive them.”

"I suppose my book, quite apart from being a memoir about my mother and what happened to her and this mystery – it’s also a campaign against collective silence because these people who knew – they knew."

There’s so much more I could say and share, but I urge you rather to read it yourself, particularly if you have an interest in memoir, in mother-daughter dynamics and understanding how art reveals life. It’s a fantastic read, one I’d actually like to read again. And the NPR radio interview is excellent.

This book was beautiful. so much to love about this, I think Laura Cumming is my new favourite nonfiction writer. So detailed and observant, and incredibly moving too.

There is some beautiful, luminous writing here, and a satisfying story, with the added intrigue that the characters are real. However, it did move rather slowly at times, and it was often difficult to discern whose was the voice telling the story - the writer or her mother. There is a need for clearer differentiation to avoid this confusion, as it takes the readers’ mind off what is being read, and becomes quite irritating as the book moves on. The author does characterise with sympathy, clarity and understanding and the description of place are clear and often lovely. The photographs are an integral part of the story and add a welcome extra dimension. A gentle, undemanding book for a lazy Summer’s day.

I know that I should love this book but the suppositions and tentative threads felt a little self indulgent.

The premise of a missing child holds one enraptured with a far deeper, multi-layered story that sits behind the kidnapping of Betty Elston/Grace Blanchard. However what could have been unravelled in a few words became an abundance of excess words. It was an interesting story but I did skip a little towards the end

The author's mother, Betty, was adopted as a child. She didn't know about this until her teenage years, and it wasn't until she was an adult that she learned that, when she was 3 years old, she was kidnapped for 5 days and then returned safely. Laura Cumming retraces her mother's early life to find out what happened and why, now that her mother is in her nineties.

I'm torn on this book. The premise is incredibly interesting, and the book goes straight to the kidnapping, making you think this will be all about her mother's family life and her adoption. However, soon enough it starts to describe landscapes, talk of poets and explorers, of vikings, of the Dutch, of painting, and on and on. I didn't mind the talk of paintings or even of explorers, but I find describing landscapes, or even worse, poets who write of landscapes, absolutely tedious. I didn't know that was what I was getting when I picked up a book about a mysterious disappearance.

The first 40% of the book was forgettable, it felt like fluff intended mostly to lengthen the book. Even after having finished it and appreciating some of the detours it takes, I feel like most of that first half didn't add anything to the story or even the reading experience. I thought of quitting every few minutes.

It wasn't until I made it halfway through that the story started to interest me, and indeed, the last half was incredibly moving and full of surprises. The story in itself is shocking, but Cumming's love for her mother (and Veda, and Mary Jane) shows in her writing and moved me to tears right at the end.

A contemplative memoir on memory, loss and family secrets, taking Cumming's mother's 1929 kidnapping as its starting point. At 3 years old, Betty was abducted from her local beach, only to be returned 5 days later. Betty herself didn't learn about this event until half a century later, and her daughter decides to research into her family history to find out why.

While rather slow paced at times, other reviewers are correct in noting that just when you start to lose interest or get distracted Cumming reveals a new fact or twist to the story which draws you right back in. Beautifully written, but overly long in my view.

I wasn’t sure about this book when I first started reading it. I was quite confused in the beginning, however I stuck to it and was engrossed. This book is about real life and a true story about what happens in families that the outsider does not find out. I liked the way the books language flows and has a way of keeping you interested to finding out what happens. It is full of mystery and art photographs diary entries totally enjoyable story of two family members and a community full with secrets to unveil.

This is quite simply spellbinding beautiful. Cummings writes with equal impressiveness of the minute detail of everyday life and the momentous history of social Britain.
This is a personal, yet universal story told with compassion, honesty and eloquence.
I loved every facet of the story and revelled, as she does, in the link between art, life and colour.
I cannot wait to share this book with others.
I am eager to read anything else by this author.
Thank you for this copy and huge congratulations to Laura Cumming

The author discovers that her mum was kidnapped as a small child and disappeared for 5 days; Mystery shrouds the case and her mum was unaware that she had been kidnapped. She tries to find out more about her mums early life - but the locals are reluctant to speak to anyone about the event.
The little pieces of information unravel slowly and you are keen to find out why there is such a mystery and what secrets are being kept.

I so enjoyed this uncovering of family secrets of an ordinary Lincolnshire lass who was kept in ignorance of her real roots. It is completely without sensation but gently prods and turns and examines the evidence, establishes the facts and sets out the likely events. Laura Cumming's mother was abducted from a local beach when she was three and brought back to the family home three days later, safe and sound and dressed in new clothes. This is the opening mystery to her life and nothing was the same afterwards but it is a symptom rather than a cause. Life between the wars in rural Lincolnshire is a silent, hard, gruelling journey where children are seen, not heard and table manners are paramount. Things are seen, but never told.
Cumming gives a wonderful sense of place in this narrative and talks of people who have hailed from these lands, of the flat expanses so like Holland, of the hard-working people. But the main subject, Betty, is described with such love and respect that it shines like a beacon. This is a story of frustration, deceipt, secrets and lies but also of love, of blossoming and of new beginnings.

On Chapel Sands is the story of a family, one that I suspect was just like many of other's in its time except of course each person is unique, the circumstances they grow up in is unique and therefore the tale they have to tell is by definition unique.

Laura Cumming tells the story of her mother. Her beginnings were shrouded in mystery and the book opens with the telling of a kidnap which was unknown for many years to come.

The piecemeal fashion we come to hear about the truth of that day, and some might argue much bigger truths mirrors the drip of information that led to the story becoming whole and at times it can seem a bit too slow. Laura and her mother are artists and so there is a good deal about the imagery of the photos taken of the young Betty, and links to famous paintings making I'm sure valid points however not being an artist some of this device was lost on me.

What I did like was being able to add my own interpretation of some of the facts that didn't gel in the earlier stages of how Betty saw her own story but I think seen through the clearer eyes of one not involved were born out of practicality. I'm pleased to say that the author seems to come to some of the same opinion during the closing chapters.

An interesting read for anyone who likes a biography of an 'ordinary' life.

On Chapel Sands has already made something of a stir in the book world. First published last July, it was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2019 and was chosen by Radio 4 for serialisation last summer. Now, it appears in paperback, and having missed it the first time round I thought that I ought to make the effort to catch up with it.

The book tells the story of Cumming’s attempts to find the truth about her mother, Betty’s, background. Pretty much all that her mother knows is that she was adopted. However, as the search progresses it becomes apparent that there is something in her history that she has either truly forgotten or subliminally suppressed. This is the feature of the book that most people will probably have heard about, the fact that as a small child Betty was kidnapped while on Chapel Sands, near her Lincolnshire home, and was missing for three days before being returned unharmed.  It is the search for the true reason behind this event that is the driving force of the book’s narrative.

Betty’s childhood was not particularly easy.  Her father, George, was a difficult man given to fits of temper. Her mother, Veda, a far more placid character, was hard pushed to make ends meet in the small two up two down terraced house that Betty knew as home. Although she eventually “escapes“ to Edinburgh, where at art college she meets Cumming’s father, Betty, now known as Elizabeth, is in many ways marked by her childhood for the rest of her life. The only evidence that the family can find about her earlier history comes in the form of a number of photos, almost all of which appear to have been taken by George, and it is through the interpretation of these that Cumming weaves her narrative about the gradual discovery of what happened to her mother on Chapel Sands and why.

The interpretation of images is a central theme within the book. Cumming herself has a background in writing about art and artists and she laces her narrative with discussions of the work of painters such as Bruegel the elder, Vuillard, Ravilious, Seurat and Degas, as well as making many references to the poet Tennyson, who grew up in a nearby village.  She focuses particularly on Bruegel’s interpretation of The Fall of Icarus, where the viewer almost certainly concentrates her or his attention on aspects of the work which have nothing to do with the title, given that the real import of the painting is hidden away in a tiny detail. This, she argues, is indicative of what happened in her mother’s story, important facts have been lost, concealed behind the larger canvas of every day life.  All around us are stories that cannot be squared or circled or turned into something so easily defined, she suggests, stories that are larger and more unexpected than we ever recognise because the tiny detail that gives them the relevance is lost, or deliberately underplayed. Chasing down such details brings to light unexpected and vital aspects of Betty’s story.

I recognise that this is a very well written and very well researched book, well worthy of the accolades that it has received. I can think of a number of people to whom I would give it secure in the knowledge that they would derive considerable pleasure from the reading. However, it was a book I struggled with, mainly I think because of the way in which it is structured. Cumming, in a manner that reflects the piecemeal and often tortuous way in which her mother came to understand the truth about her background, offers the reader a very slow and convoluted reveal. While many will appreciate the small details that she offers about her mother’s upbringing, I found myself wanting to say, please, just tell me what happened. Who took Betty from the beach that day and why? What is the truth about her background, about her adoption, about the way in which George treats her?  This, I am sure, is a reflection of my own preference for a plot driven narrative. It is certainly not a fault with the book. Cumming chooses to explore all the tiny byways of her mother’s life and the family’s search for the truth. There is absolutely nothing wrong in this. It just wasn’t for me.

With thanks to Random House UK, Vintage Publishing and NetGalley for a review copy.

On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming is a memoir about a complicated family history and secrets that were kept hidden.