Reviewed by Rose Gant
Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press: 2013)
Members of the Suffolk Book League will be no strangers to the works of Maggie O’Farrell, particularly her recent foray into historical fiction with The Marriage Portrait (2022) and Hamnet (2020) which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction that year. But how many of us have delved into her earlier works?
I picked up The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006) upon recommendation from one of my work colleagues. She didn’t tell me anything about the book beforehand, just handed it to me and said I had to read it to see how O’Farrell grips you from the first page. It is difficult to not feel compelled to read on.
The story follows Esme who has been living in a mental hospital for 60 years but has to leave due to its imminent closure. Her living next of kin, Iris, was unaware of Esme’s existence and the story follows how she navigates her relationship with her new relative, while putting together the puzzle pieces of her past.
The story is told from three perspectives and in different time frames. We have the present narrative and then are given glimpses of Esme’s childhood and the fragmented memories of her sister, Kitty, who is living in a care home with dementia. Through this combination of compelling narratives Esme’s past unfolds and as a reader I was drawn to the book to learn why she became isolated for such a long period of time.
The structure of the story is also quite unique. There are no set sections or chapters, the narrative is simply broken by an extended line break, which I found even more entrancing when reading.
Without spoiling any of the plot’s many twists and turns, I found the ending quite sudden, but I think that reflects my consumption in the story and characters, as I did not want to leave them! It is also a shorter novel at 288 pages but O’Farrell utilises every moment to draw you into the lives of her characters.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is a truly captivating read that I highly recommend.
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