Maura (maura853) -
A fascinating family memoir, intensely moving in the way it captures a lost past.
Laura Cummings, as a late-life gift to her beloved mother, has drawn together the threads of the story of her mother's birth and up-bringing, a story so bizarre and emotionally convoluted that it could easily pass as the outline of a lost novel by Thomas Hardy.
Cummings uses one episode from her mother's infancy as the hook to draw her readers in: when Betty was three years old, she was "kidnapped" out from under her mother's eyes, as she played on the beach outside their home, the Chapel Sands of the title. I use the quotation marks advisedly, as the snatching of the child turns out to be a tipping point in a complicated family saga. No charges were pressed, and no one was prosecuted -- although there were serious consequences for the kidnappers, and for "Betty." Who, technically should also be bracketed in quotation marks as, until a few days before the kidnapping, she had been called Grace, she had lived with a different family, and had a different life laid out for her.
I defy you to read that, and not want to rush out and grab this book in your hot little hands, immediately. The whole story is a corker, and I won't spoil it for you by revealing any more -- Cummings has done an amazing job of family history research, detective work, reconstruction of time past, and sheer footwork, and you deserve to discover it just as she lays it out. But just to give you an idea of what she was up against, as she embarked on her research-- her mother (now no longer Grace or Betty, but Elizabeth) had no memory of the kidnapping, and knew nothing about it until she was in her 50s. Just one of the pattern of secrets and lies that surrounded this otherwise ordinary little girl.
This book is exceptional for the way that it reconstructs the lost world of Betty's childhood. To quote another Edwardian author, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." And for Betty's past, her daughter has to drawn the maps, write the guide books, and devise the translations of helpful phrases. And she does this so skilfully that you can feel the stale atmosphere of the tiny, over-furnished rooms, smell the boiled cabbage that accompanied bland, unimaginative meals, and feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle as you are observed by people who know more about you than you do yourself.
As a journalist who specializes in art history and criticism, it's not surprising that Cummings makes skilful use of images: both family photographs, which are revealed to be fraught with hidden meanings and emotional undercurrents, and even classic paintings, which she uses to illustrate some of her points about family relationships, secrets and story-telling.
The only flaw -- the reason that it's 4-stars instead of 5 -- is that, for me, it can be overwritten. Cummings is obviously very taken with the Hardyesque nature of her story, and in that spirit, the whole thing is imbued with a thick layer of poetry (aka, sometimes, and IMHO, as "cliche" ...). No object is allowed to get away with some deeper meeting, no vista doesn't lend some deeper insight into the very soul of the viewer. And every character, however minor, is on the lam from "The Mayor of Casterbridge." To borrow an image from art, Cumming's tale of her mother's strange childhood is powerful enough that she really didn't need the veneer.
But that's a flaw that is easily forgiven -- this is highly recommended.
Laura Cummings, as a late-life gift to her beloved mother, has drawn together the threads of the story of her mother's birth and up-bringing, a story so bizarre and emotionally convoluted that it could easily pass as the outline of a lost novel by Thomas Hardy.
Cummings uses one episode from her mother's infancy as the hook to draw her readers in: when Betty was three years old, she was "kidnapped" out from under her mother's eyes, as she played on the beach outside their home, the Chapel Sands of the title. I use the quotation marks advisedly, as the snatching of the child turns out to be a tipping point in a complicated family saga. No charges were pressed, and no one was prosecuted -- although there were serious consequences for the kidnappers, and for "Betty." Who, technically should also be bracketed in quotation marks as, until a few days before the kidnapping, she had been called Grace, she had lived with a different family, and had a different life laid out for her.
I defy you to read that, and not want to rush out and grab this book in your hot little hands, immediately. The whole story is a corker, and I won't spoil it for you by revealing any more -- Cummings has done an amazing job of family history research, detective work, reconstruction of time past, and sheer footwork, and you deserve to discover it just as she lays it out. But just to give you an idea of what she was up against, as she embarked on her research-- her mother (now no longer Grace or Betty, but Elizabeth) had no memory of the kidnapping, and knew nothing about it until she was in her 50s. Just one of the pattern of secrets and lies that surrounded this otherwise ordinary little girl.
This book is exceptional for the way that it reconstructs the lost world of Betty's childhood. To quote another Edwardian author, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." And for Betty's past, her daughter has to drawn the maps, write the guide books, and devise the translations of helpful phrases. And she does this so skilfully that you can feel the stale atmosphere of the tiny, over-furnished rooms, smell the boiled cabbage that accompanied bland, unimaginative meals, and feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle as you are observed by people who know more about you than you do yourself.
As a journalist who specializes in art history and criticism, it's not surprising that Cummings makes skilful use of images: both family photographs, which are revealed to be fraught with hidden meanings and emotional undercurrents, and even classic paintings, which she uses to illustrate some of her points about family relationships, secrets and story-telling.
The only flaw -- the reason that it's 4-stars instead of 5 -- is that, for me, it can be overwritten. Cummings is obviously very taken with the Hardyesque nature of her story, and in that spirit, the whole thing is imbued with a thick layer of poetry (aka, sometimes, and IMHO, as "cliche" ...). No object is allowed to get away with some deeper meeting, no vista doesn't lend some deeper insight into the very soul of the viewer. And every character, however minor, is on the lam from "The Mayor of Casterbridge." To borrow an image from art, Cumming's tale of her mother's strange childhood is powerful enough that she really didn't need the veneer.
But that's a flaw that is easily forgiven -- this is highly recommended.
