The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is an adept and cleverly written novel which takes place over three main time periods and involves three main characters. This complex and interesting story begins in modern day Scotland, where a young, very modern woman named Iris is portrayed in her shop with an unsympathetic attitude and hints of an unstable family upbringing. O'Farrell then unravels the ties and loose ends of her history, and introduces the reader to her grandmother, Kitty, who suffers from severe Alzheimer's, and her secret great-aunt, Esme, who has been locked away in a mental institution since adolesence for reasons left unclear until the climatic ending. As the ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a fictional account of a woman who spent 60 years in a mental institution for no better reason than she was rather eccentric and unconventional in a way which her 1930s conformist family considered to be unacceptable. It is made all the more poignant and relevant because it is now known that many men and more women actually suffered this fate in the first half of the twentieth century, being consigned to asylums by their families when young and then forgotten. The plight of many only really came into the public arena when such institutions were closed in favour of ...