A review of On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming

For images essential to narrative: In Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Living Persons (Vintage, 2020), the author searches for why her mother went temporarily missing as a child. As hugely intriguing as she makes this story, one of the best aspects of this fabulous book is Cumming’s use of images, including photographs, prints, paintings, book illustrations, and drawings. It should not be surprising that an art critic for the Observer would be able to analyse and speculate from visual cues so powerfully. The way Cumming writes about art for narrative is a model to other writers. I have eagerly bought her next book Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death (Chatto & Windus, 2023) and will get back to you with my impressions.

Available to buy at On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming | Waterstones