Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death

"Cumming articulates why we are so magnetically drawn to certain paintings, even when their painters are long gone ..."

"The book transpires to be neither a grave-to-cradle nor a cradle-to-grave biography of Fabritius, but rather a lyrical contemplation of his life's work, the culture of the Dutch Golden Age and Cumming's memories of her father ..."

"It is an emotionally informed approach to art, always paying attention to the fact that each person's vision is different (one of her daughters goes colour-blind as she is writing this book, having stared too long at the sun)."

"Its thunderclap still echoes in my ears."

"A tender homage to art ..."

"Its elegiac meanderings return time and time again to the figure of Carel Fabritius ..."

"Cumming suggests that we recall the past through pictures ..."

"Cumming...draws us into another mystery that fascinates her: that of the brief life of the genius Fabritius, the painter of The Goldfinch, the chained bird that stares back at us from its prison of a perch ..."

"Cumming [has] created an investigative, thought-provoking space, reminding us that looking at a great work of art can begin a lifelong thunderclap of obsession."

"When I read Cumming's last paragraph, the baleful rumble of the Delft disaster became an outburst of delighted, admiring laughter."