The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox cover art

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

By: Maggie O'Farrell
Narrated by: Daniela Nardini
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £11.48

Buy Now for £11.48

Summary

From the Costa Award winning, best-selling author of This Must Be the Place and I Am, I Am, I Am, comes an intense, breathtakingly accomplished story of a woman's life stolen and reclaimed.

Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.

Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released.

Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox and the one person who should know more, her grandmother Kitty, seems unable to answer Iris's questions. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

©2006 Maggie O'Farrell Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Scary Tear-jerking
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic reviews

"O'Farrell's imaginative territory is one you return to with delight." (The Times)

"Unputdownable." (Ali Smith)

"In one touching scene Esme, sitting in the car with Iris, attempting to process her sudden emergence into the world, pretends to fall asleep because 'she needs to think'. Iris reaches over and turns off the radio; this is 'the single nicest act that Esme has witnessed in a long time. It almost makes her cry'." (The Times)
All stars
Most relevant
This is a woman's book. I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but any woman would be gripped by the appalling and sad story of Esme. This book is a little slow to start, but once the characters are established, it is fascinating to compare the lives of women born 50 years apart, and Daniela Nardini is excellent at delivering the changing voices of the different generations. The story unfolds slowly through snippets of conversation until everything falls into place. Clever and thought-provoking.

Glad to be modern

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Moving tale and I enjoyed it very much. The only thing that spoiled it for me was the sound effect when Kitty when recalling this from the past. The first time it happened I deleted the book and downloaded it again because I thought it was corrupted. Sadly not. It seemed to happen during the middle of the book and then go away towards the end. Odd.

Lovely story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well narrated.
Complex story, but so well written. Each character came to life as their story entwined and determined the outcomes for the other.

listened in twenty four hours. Wanted to know more

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
beautiful narration of a gripping and sad story, throwing insights into the supression of women, the class system and the awful patriarchal system of psychiatric care in the first half of the 20th C

gripping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Maggie O’Farrell brought alive the awful practices of early last century & the injustice that was suffered by Esme & so many other women. Great narration, gripping story, harrowing at times.

Gripping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews