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Summary and Reviews of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

by Maggie O'Farrell
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  • Critics' Consensus (11):
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  • First Published:
  • Oct 24, 2007, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2008, 256 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Maggie O’Farrell takes readers on a journey to the darker places of the human heart, where desires struggle with the imposition of social mores. This haunting story explores the seedy past of Victorian asylums, the oppression of family secrets, and the way truth can change everything.

In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?

Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.

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Reviews

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The virtue of this book is its absorbing, suspenseful narration. The reader joins Iris on a kind of detective hunt for her family's true story, and O'Farrell masterfully times the clues to both gratify the hunger for answers and extend the mystery even further. Yet the book's downfall is how thoroughly it sacrifices character development to the rhythms of its engrossing plot. The book dips into the heads of its female protagonists—Iris, Esme, and Esme's sister Kitty—but all three remain stock characters without true interiority. Their thoughts and actions are calculated not to reveal how women in their situation might feel but, rather, to reveal the pieces of the puzzle with deft narrative control. This is a serious flaw in a work that aims to pierce the stereotype of the hysterical woman...continued

Full Review (556 words)

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(Reviewed by Amy Reading).

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Beyond the Book



Mental Health in the 19th and 20th Centuries

  • The events in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox are based on a real British policy which deinstitutionalized thousands of psychiatric patients beginning in 1990. Margaret Thatcher's Care in the Community program sought to end outmoded, Victorian-era mental institutions by releasing such patients back into their homes, their illnesses controlled by medication and individualized treatment rather than confinement. The program ended in 1998 after a series of highly-publicized crimes by former inmates. The British health secretary recalled many patients who were living without supervision and placed them back into residential treatment centers.
  • Mental institutions were a humane advance in the early 19th century,...

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