Author: Maggie O'Farrell
Genre: Psychological thriller; Gothic fiction*
Content: Adult; sex; some violence; family drama
Length: 245 pages
I bought The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox at an airport, grabbing it somewhat blindly when I realized the bookstore was having a 2-for-1 deal. An hour into my plane ride I realized what a lucky grab that was.
Maggie O'Farrell writes a novel unique from any I've read in a long time, even in terms of basic subject matter. This novel explores the female psyche and divulges all the terror of a woman's worst fears with disquieting realism. Writing from multiple points of view, and switching back and forth between past and present, sane and insane, O'Farrell intertwines the thoughts, conversations and experiences of different people in the world of Esme Lennox to flesh out a haunting family story of terrible secrets, female oppression, and the trauma of betrayal by the closest of kin.
If you're looking for a story with a happy ending, read no further - but I can promise you a satisfying psychological thriller.
O'Farrell prefaces her book with the striking Emily Dickinson poem "Much Madness is divinest Sense" and a stirring quote from Edith Wharton's classic Ethan Frome. These famous literary references are fitting harbingers of the themes of insanity, unfairness, and unhappiness that permeate the novel. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is indeed an unhappy book, but it's one written in a dolefully beautiful and compelling way.
The story is that of Esme Lennox, the off-beat daughter of well-to-do parents in an upstanding family that returns to 1930s Edinburgh, Scotland from their home in colonial India to find their teen daughters Esme and Kitty suitable husbands.
Dreamy-eyed, disobedient and brilliantly imaginative, the young Esme Lennox is - by modern standards - eccentric, socially awkward and easily distracted. By 1930s standards, however, she is a social pariah because she forgets to wear her gloves and an intense humiliation to her well-known family because she is disobedient in public. In the end, she is written off as a crippling social liability that must be dealt with - permanently - in order to preserve the family name. At 16, after she's caught dancing in front of the mirror wearing her mother's negligee, Esme is forced into an insane asylum and erased from the collective family memory. This is the story of her life and what the reader hopes will be her ultimate vindication.
Within the first ten pages, it's clear that O'Farrell isn't taking the standard approach to writing a book about female oppression in the first half of the 20th century. Esme, her sister Kitty, and a younger relative named Iris take turns guiding the story's fluctuating path. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox takes on the issues of female oppression, questions what constitutes insanity and explores the treacherous ties between mothers, daughters and sisters by making all of these elements part of the fabric of each woman's narrative. You'll be transfixed by the beauty and senselessness that combine to create full chapters of the detailed streams-of-consciousness of women whose sanity - or insanity - cannot be determined so easily after all. Details and secrets are partly revealed, yanked away, and then peek out from hiding yet again in a way that makes it difficult not to flip through the pages to uncover shadowy family secrets.
By page ten of the novel the reader has been transported through time some sixty years into the future to meet the sensitive, issue-ridden Iris. This young relative of Esme has never heard of her supposed great-aunt but is suddenly thrust headlong into her world. In Iris there is a hope that Esme will be known and remembered, and that her secrets will not die with her. She seems to need Esme to drift into her life to help her gain a sense of self and a life balance. Esme herself is lovable for her sweet nature and her idiosyncrasies, and her strange intelligence is deftly portrayed.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox compels deep compassion for a young girl locked in a prison for dancing too freely and speaking too openly. You'll find yourself racked with anger and demanding justice when all is revealed in the novel's genius twist and you realize the extent to which Esme has been punished for life for crimes done against her by those who should have been her protectors.
*Note: If you love The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, you'll want to read this!
Other books by Maggie O'Farrell:
After You'd Gone
My Lover's Lover
The Distance Between Us
The Hand that First Held Mine
Buy The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox now at Amazon.com by clicking here.
Or, to learn more about Maggie O'Farrell, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment