“Life reproves the imagination: look closer.” So Cummings does. This is the story of her mother, who was inexplicably kidnapped from the beach, aged three, and safely recovered twelve days later. However, it's not a straightforward narrative, beginning at her birth and ending in her old age, and progressing through schooldays, marriage, adult life. For Betty (Laura Cummings' mother), life was something of a mystery, posing unanswered questions which Laura painstakingly unpicks, but not necessarily in date order. Her first point of reference is that adored mother Betty, and her own brief memoir. But there are the villagers from the community where Betty was brought up, and the secrets they kept. There are legal documents. There are photographs. And there is Laura's own willingness not to take what she finds out at face value. Her references to the work of artists whom she feels illuminate her story, either by referencing Betty's own home landscape, or by having something to say about the kind of community in which she lived - Brueghel's 'The Fall of Icarus' - are the jewels of this book, enriching and bringing colour to an already involving story. The passages examining Betty's father George's photographic portrait of her mother Veda are among the most memorable in the book.

Finally, Laura's recognition that people are nor simply heroes or villains (though her mother remains her hero) brings the book to a thought provoking conclusion. Baddies turn out to have their redeeming features. Goodies keep silent. Humans are complicated. This is a book that may stay with you once you have turned the last page. ( )

I loved this book. That being said, it's not exactly what it says on the tin. Instead of an account of the child's disappearance, with some context before and some wrapping up after the event, it is instead a memoir of the early years of the author's mother, focusing on how her life was shaped by the domineering father and the repressive silence on all things personal in that family. There is much talk of art, which is fitting for the memoir of a woman who grows up to be an artist and also marry an artist, and much talk of Tennyson, which felt less fitting and I mostly skimmed over any lengthy bits about him. So the kidnapping is in the title, and it is certainly a crucial, defining event in the memoir, but it is not the focus of the book; the book is so much more, and it is so much better because of it. ( )

Recommended to me by John Paine. I enjoyed this but have to admit to hurrying the last 30 pages because I think the book was about that much too long. You cannot make your reader wait as long as you did for a mystery to be solved. ( )

The blurb I read about this book said that it comes from the author discovering that her mother had been kidnapped for 3 days when she was a young girl.

And so begins an odyssey into family history, Englishness, class, and Fen country.

Starting from a few rinds of information and trying to rebuild the events against the reticence of folk and the wash of the years and an intentional silence.

The book is taken up solving the mystery of the abduction and the events surrounding it. Removing the mists around this event also meant revealing other events and people, which in turn meant revealing more events and more people in an environment of enforced silence.

This book is a detective novel of sorts, a biography of sorts and an inventory of human hearts.

Anyone who has ever tried to unravel family mysteries will feel both at home and sympathetic to the journey that Laura Cumming takes us on, not just as readers but also as fellow travellers for in all our family histories is much that was never meant to be said but the absence of words is sometimes louder that the words that finally get spoken.

Set among a background of grey featureless seas, flat landscape, black and white photos and that curious lack of curiosity that is a feature of many English people.

The black and white photos become a lens to see the past, by who is in them, and who is not, by how they are composed and their intrinsic quality of fact.

Although this is someone else's story there is much to be enjoyed here because by writing the book, the author is inviting us to share this journey. It is a privilege you should accept.
( )

An unusual biography of the author’s mother, her extremely strict parents as she grew up in rural Lincolnshire, and the search for her full story.
Like a detective story, the secrets are gradually revealed and guesses at the protagonists thoughts and motives are made.
As the author is an art critic, there is telling analysis of a few photos from the family album, and imaginative use of paintings to, perhaps, help explain neighbours’ approach and attitudes to what had happened. ( )