The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
The Sunday Times Bestseller from the Author of Hamnet
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The intense and breathtakingly accomplished novel from the bestselling author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT
*440,000 copies sold"
'Seductive in style, prickly, disturbing and delicious' Olivia Laing
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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?
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'Actually unputdownable' Ali Smith
'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph
'O'Farrell's subtlety and delicate touch have never been so finely demonstrated' Independent on Sunday
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Farrell (After You'd Gone) delivers an intricate, eloquent novel of family malice, longings and betrayal. Slim, stylish Iris Lockhart runs a dress shop in contemporary Edinburgh when she's not flirting with her stepbrother Alex or rendezvousing with her married attorney lover, Luke. Esme Lennox, meanwhile, is ready to be discharged from the soon-to-be-closed psychiatric hospital where she's been a patient (read: virtual prisoner) for 61 years. Iris becomes aware of Esme's existence when she's informed, to her disbelief, that she has been granted power of attorney over Esme by Kitty Lockhart, Iris's Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother. It turns out Kitty and Esme are sisters, but Kitty kept quiet about Esme after she was hospitalized at age 16. Layer upon layer of Lockhart family secrets are laid bare the truth behind Esme's institutionalization, why her existence was kept a secret, and a twist involving Iris's parents as Iris mulls over what to do with her new charge, and Esme and Kitty reconnect. O'Farrell maintains a high level of tension throughout, and the conclusion is devastating.
