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36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intricate and moving story, November 14, 2007
Esme Lennox is a spirited girl who does not conform to 1930's society norms and so is locked up by her family in a mental asylum. "Insists on keeping her hair long", reads her record of admission. "Dances before a mirror dressed in her mother's clothes". Like The Memory Keeper's Daughter, the book begins with an act that would be unthinkable today but which was considered perfectly appropriate at the time. Sixty years later, her great niece, Iris, receives a phone call to tell her that the asylum is closing and she needs to take responsibility for her grandmother's sister - which is the first time that she has ever heard of Esme. Of Esme's family, only her sister Kitty (Iris's grandmother) is still alive, and she has Alzheimer's.
This is an interesting and moving story. Esme is a wonderful character and I felt sad and angry by the way that she had been cheated out of her life. I also liked Iris (though would have preferred less emphasis on her relationships with the men in her life and more on her relationship with Esme). The narrative jumps between Iris, Esme in the present day, Esme and Kitty as children and Kitty in the present day. It took me a while to get my head round the various strands. Kitty has Alzheimer's so her sections are written in a rambling stream of consciousness, which take a little getting used to but which is quite effective.
The ending is somewhat rushed and vaguely written. But it still packs a punch. It's one that you want to discuss with others. Overall this is a very good read that stays with you for some time.
If you enjoyed this book, I recommend The Secret Scripture which is also about a woman locked away in a mental asylum many years ago for spurious reasons.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed but devastating, August 21, 2008
SPOILERS ALERT: This book tracks, out of chronological order, the destructive effect an intolerant, narrow-minded family has not only on their scapegoated daughter, who may have some sort of learning disability (perhaps ADHD) but is hardly psychotic--at first--but also on their favored daughter. As others have pointed out, you can guess most of the "secrets" well ahead of the end if the book, but I don't think that's its point. I think it's more that the evil parents do lives after them, and Kitty's compounded failures towards Esme seem may be initiated by romantic rivalry, but that's just the trigger after years of accumulated frustration of being unable to protect her from either parents or bullying schoolmates--eventually Kitty just identifies with the aggressors and accepts the conventional view of all things, including Esme. The consequences for Esme are horrific, particularly when we can guess that if she entered art school or drama school she'd probably fit right in, but Kitty's marriage and future happiness are also doomed by her inability to rebel, just as Esme is doomed by her inability to comply. The book explores how when one family member is scapegoated, other members are also permanently damaged by being forced to witness or participate in the scapegoating: nobody wins. The readers who view the ending as someone who "got away with it" for years finally getting just deserts have missed the point that this tragedy was set in motion years ago by parents and doctors who got young girls to say what they wanted to hear, and then left them to bear the consequences. And as tempting as it is to stop there, one need only refer to Larkins' "This Be the Verse" to see that the damage affects more than one generation.
If anything, the book reminds me of _Wuthering Heights_: it also flashes back and forth in time, we don't know who is who at the beginning or how the situation came to be as it is when we begin, and we see how several generations are marred by poisonous family relations and bullying. WH at least offers the possiblity that some things are resolved or transcended by death, but in _Vanishing_ we are not even offered that frail hope.
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Indelicate Acts, December 29, 2007
Maggie O'Farrell's novel is a delicately told tale of indelicate acts. Young and single Iris has a love life fraught with taboos and an ordinary routine that preserves both her independence and her anonymity. When she receives a call from a local mental institution that she is the sole surviving heir of a great-aunt she has never heard of and who has been removed from society for sixty years, her life begins its slow unraveling. The institution is closing, and the mystery woman, Euphemia Lennox, has no place to go. Iris and Euphemia (who calls herself Esme) begin a fragile relationship as Iris struggles to juggle both her need for personal space and her guilt. Meanwhile, Esme has her own goals.
In fine, exact language, this slim novel unfolds through the fractured point-of-views of Iris, Esme, and Iris's grandmother Kitty, who suffers from Alzheimer's. The narrative is structured like a jigsaw puzzle, with bits of information judiciously offered until the whole picture is assembled. Unfortunately, the "secret" behind Esme's confinement and Kitty's guilt is a little too predictable, and the final act of the novel seems somewhat over-the-top and therefore not as satisfying as one might like. Still, O'Farrell's handling of the story and its issues is both evocative and authoritative.
Readers interested in the changing expectations of women may be intrigued by the author's premise that, while gender expectations may change over generations, women who rebel against society's rules still do so at personal cost. Because this book is not told in a straightforward narrative, casual readers may be frustrated trying to figure out what is happening, but readers of more serious fiction will find it both accessible and a quick read. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is a good, but not great, book - the perfect book for an evening or two by the fire.
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