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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennoxby Maggie O'Farrell |
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In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend?s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital?where she has been locked away for more than sixty-one years.
Iris?s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme?s papers prove she is Kitty?s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme?s face.
Esme has been labeled harmless?sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But she's still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?
A gothic, intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox will haunt you long past its final page.
Iris?s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme?s papers prove she is Kitty?s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme?s face.
Esme has been labeled harmless?sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But she's still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?
A gothic, intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox will haunt you long past its final page.
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Great book!! -  |
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Review |
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I really enjoyed this book. It was a very quick read. The story sometimes is a bit difficult to follow as it is sometimes told from the past and other time during the present. Stay with it, there are some very suble clues along the way, but the ending is a twist. |
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Esme and The Inconvenient Wife - |
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Review |
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A friend recommended this book because I had enjoyed Megan Chance's novel about a woman, who was committed to a mental hospital by her husband, that was set over 50 years earlier. An Inconvenient Wife and O'Farrell's novel both show how upper class women were forced to conform---or pay a terrible price. Some of the treatments for hysteria in the mid-nineteenth century are still used today.
What I enjoyed the most was piecing together the fragments from Kitty's demented ramblings and Esme's recollections. The author uses Kitty's Alzheimer's-type thoughts---giving us incomplete or misunderstood ideas that are only fully comprehended when we have learned the facts from Esme's perspective. I like having to think while I read. I think this compares to The Madonnas of Leningrad because of the use of Alzheimer's thought patterns to unravel a woman's life story. We get the parts given to us and we have to put the puzzle together. |
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Flawed but devastating -  |
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Review |
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SPOILERS ALERT: This book tracks, out of chronological order, the destructive effect an intolerant, narrow-minded family has not only on their scapegoated daughter, who may have some sort of learning disability (perhaps ADHD) but is hardly psychotic--at first--but also on their favored daughter. As others have pointed out, you can guess most of the "secrets" well ahead of the end if the book, but I don't think that's its point. I think it's more that the evil parents do lives after them, and Kitty's compounded failures towards Esme seem may be initiated by romantic rivalry, but that's just the trigger after years of accumulated frustration of being unable to protect her from either parents or bullying schoolmates--eventually Kitty just identifies with the aggressors and accepts the conventional view of all things, including Esme. The consequences for Esme are horrific, particularly when we can guess that if she entered art school or drama school she'd probably fit right in, but Kitty's marriage and future happiness are also doomed by her inability to rebel, just as Esme is doomed by her inability to comply. The book explores how when one family member is scapegoated, other members are also permanently damaged by being forced to witness or participate in the scapegoating: nobody wins. The readers who view the ending as someone who "got away with it" for years finally getting just deserts have missed the point that this tragedy was set in motion years ago by parents and doctors who got young girls to say what they wanted to hear, and then left them to bear the consequences. And as tempting as it is to stop there, one need only refer to Larkins' "This Be the Verse" to see that the damage affects more than one generation.
If anything, the book reminds me of _Wuthering Heights_: it also flashes back and forth in time, we don't know who is who at the beginning or how the situation came to be as it is when we begin, and we see how several generations are marred by poisonous family relations and bullying. WH at least offers the possiblity that some things are resolved or transcended by death, but in _Vanishing_ we are not even offered that frail hope. |
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don't waste your time -  |
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Review |
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After reading reviews on this book, I was really looking forward to reading it. What a disappointment! The writing was all over the place - lots of incomplete thoughts and just fragments of what was supposedly going on. Main character was intriguing - marched to the beat of a different drummer - but she had everything against her: selfish parents, jealous sister, rape, baby as result of the rape and then the baby taken from her and a family that cares so little for her that they leave her locked up in an institution for 60 years. After all that, she should have been a raving lunatic. Not even a satisfactory conclusion tying it all together. The ending leaves the whole story up in the air. Don't waste your time. |
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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - |
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Review |
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I found this book fascinating. It was well written. The only negative was the timeline; switching back and forth between past and present was at times difficult to keep up with. However, the story was very interesting. I did not want to put this book down! It generated one of the best discussions my book club has had. |
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