The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox: Maggie O'Farrell

by Maggie O ' Farrell (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2013

  $3.79

  THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX is classic Maggie O'Farrell: a stunning imagining of a 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?

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $6.25

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.86

  A significant departure for Maggie O'Farrell in terms of maturity and style, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX will be one of the unmissable publishing events of 2006. Set between the 1930s,and the present, Maggie O'Farrell's new novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family's history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had. The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh - of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal - but above all it is the story of Esme, a fiercely intelligent, unconventional young woman, and of the terrible price she is made to pay for her family's unhappiness. This is vintage Maggie O'Farrell: an impassioned, intense, haunting family drama - a stunning imagining of a life stolen, and reclaimed.

• New

  Paperback
  2013

  $12.41

  THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX is classic Maggie O'Farrell: a stunning imagining of a 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?