Author(s): Anne Summers

Business & Economics

The Lost Mother is a poignant, interweaving narrative about author Anne Summers' relationship with her mother, Eileen Hogan, told through her search for a lost painting of her mother as a child. In 1933, the artist Constance Parkin saw Summers' mother, a ten-year-old schoolgirl, at Mass one Sunday morning in Brighton. Evidently attracted by something about the young girl's features, Parkin asked if she might paint her portrait. Over the next few months, Parkin painted two portraits of Eileen: Alice, in which the schoolgirl holds a large Alice in Wonderland book; and A Saint, a religious painting in which the young girl is draped in fabric so as to appear like the Madonna. Alice was eventually purchased by Summers' grandmother from the Catholic Archdiocese in 1970. The whereabouts of A Saint remain unknown. Summers' search for the painting is simultaneously an intriguing literary mystery and a touching attempt to bring closure and understanding to her turbulent relationship with her mother.