The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
Maggie O'Farrell's three previous novels have been respectfully reviewed, but her new one radiates the kind of energy that marks a classic. Think Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea: stories that illuminate the suffering quietly endured by women in polite society. To that list of insightful feminist tales add The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. At the heart of this fantastic new novel is a mystery you want to solve until you start to suspect the truth, and then you read on in a panic, horrified that you may be right.The structure of the novel is a challenge, more like a dare, the kind of purposefully scrambled puzzle that makes you wonder if it's all just too much work to figure out who's talking and when this happened and what that means. But forge on: O'Farrell isn't merely showing off; she's forcing us to participate in a family's ghastly conspiracy of forgetting.In the present day, we meet Iris Lockhart, a Scottish shop owner who specializes in vintage clothing. She's entangled in an unsatisfying affair with a married man and a mostly repressed relationship with her stepbrother. The last thing she has time for is a cryptic letter, then a phone call from a nearby mental hospital. It seems budget cuts have encouraged the staff to reevaluate all their patients, and some old woman named Euphemia Lennox is being released after 60 years."I have no idea who you people are or what you want," Iris tells them, "but I've never heard of Euphemia Lennox."A case worker patiently explains: "It's not unusual for patients of ours to . . . shall we say, fall out of sight." Euphemia -- Esme -- is her great-aunt, a woman no one in the family has ever mentioned. Friends warn her not to get involved, but then Iris meets her in the fetid hospital: She had been "expecting someone frail or infirm, a tiny geriatric, a witch from a fairytale. But this woman is tall, with an angular face and searching eyes. She has an air of slight hauteur, the expression arch, the brows raised. Although she must be in her seventies, there is something incongruously childlike about her. . . . Without warning, Euphemia's hand shoots out and seizes her wrist. Iris cannot help herself: she jumps back, turning to look for the nurse, the social worker. Immediately Euphemia lets go. 'Don't worry,' she says, with an odd smile. 'I don't bite.' "That mixture of sympathy, wit and menace is only part of what makes the novel so irresistible. Seeing Esme's desperation, Iris decides to help her find somewhere to live. The interaction between this thoroughly modern young woman and her great-aunt, who's just stepped from some ghastly Brigadoon, is surprisingly poignant. Released into the modern world after more than half a century, Esme has "a certain wide-eyed quality, her lack of inhibition, perhaps -- that marks her out from other people. . . . She is doing everything, Iris notices, with an odd kind of reverence. How mad is she?" They're both terrified the first night: Iris expects to be stabbed by the "mad old woman," while Esme worries she'll be sent back to that hellhole.Modern cars, planes and radios are marvels to her, but the wind, the sea, the freedom to walk, "her first unsupervised bath for over sixty years," these are the pleasures Esme soaks up, and her wonder makes Iris reexamine everything around her.But beneath this story, O'Farrell has written a searing indictment of the way psychiatry was used to control women and girls who refused to conform. Searching for an explanation of her aunt's incarceration, Iris finds reports in the hospital's archives that regard psychotic and perfectly ordinary behavior with equal suspicion. The medical standards sound as crazy as any of the "symptoms" being detailed: "Iris reads of refusals to speak, of unironed clothes, of arguments with neighbors, of hysteria, of unwashed dishes and unswept floors, of never wanting marital relations or wanting them too much or not enough or not in the right way or seeking them elsewhere. Of husbands at the ends of their tethers, of parents unable to understand the women their daughters have become, or fathers who insist, over and over again, that she used to be such a lovely little thing."And finally she finds Esme's admission report from when she was 16 years old. It contains these weirdly innocuous details: "Insists on keeping her hair long. . . . Parents report finding her dancing before a mirror, dressed in her mother's clothes."The solution to this puzzle comes slowly in two vastly different and much older stories that O'Farrell weaves through the description of Iris's nervous weekend with her long-lost aunt. It's a challenge, but you'll eventually learn to recognize these disparate voices -- and come to see the brilliance of mixing them like this. In one, an omniscient narrator tells brief, Gothic anecdotes about Esme's adolescence. She was the precocious daughter of a wealthy Scottish family that had lived in India. We see her parents mostly on the periphery: They are deeply perturbed by her irreverence, her bookishness, her refusal to participate appropriately in the social customs of their rank. "The Oddbod, they called her," but she doesn't care. Esme cannot abide the "nervous men with over-combed hair, scrubbed hands and pressed shirts" who come for tea with her and her sister. "The whole thing made Esme want to burst into honesty," which, as O'Farrell suggests, is the last thing refined society can tolerate.Then there is a third narrator, the strange, pained, truly mad voice of Esme's sister, Kitty, whose mind is ravaged by Alzheimer's. She lives in a posh rest home just a few miles from the prison-like hospital where Esme spent all those unspeakable decades. Torn by crosscurrents of guilt and self-justification, Kitty's narrative starts and stops in mid-sentences. "But I never meant for her to -- " These shards of confession don't make any sense at first, but slowly a horrible image of what happened in their house begins to develop. It's a breathtaking, heart-breaking creation.Even a sympathetic reader, though, might wonder if, like Esme's release, this novel is 60 years too late. After all, the feminist writer of today confronts a challenge that Gilman, Rhys, Chopin or even Virginia Woolf never had to face: the threat of easy acceptance. Nowadays, we already understand how Bertha ended up in Rochester's attic; we expect Edna to take that final, liberating swim; we know who's trapped behind the yellow wallpaper. Is there really anything that would shock us about the abuse of psychiatry and medicine in the service of chauvinism and class?The modern-day frame of this novel provides an insightful and troubling response to that objection. Of course, budget cuts and civil rights lawyers have largely dismantled the kinds of places that held people like Esme, but young women still find themselves straitjacketed by subtler forms of restraint. After all, Iris looks so free, so sexually liberated, but she's trapped, too, incapable of acting on her desires for fear of condemnation and disapproval. In O'Farrell's fierce, engrossing novel, the crimes of the past rear up with surprising vengeance. Esme Lennox won't vanish again anytime soon. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Every now and then you come across a book so perfectly whole, so complete in itself, that you marvel as you read. It has such flow, such control of style, such effortless prose, that it's almost impossible to put it down. Such a book is The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which I could have easily read in one sitting except I had to go to work.The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is the story of three women and the burning secrets that affected them all. Iris Lockhart is a young, single, modern women living in Edinburgh, having an affair with a married man and pretending to herself that she didn't once have a secret relationship with her step-brother, Alex. But it's her life, and when she gets a call about a great-aunt locked up in a mental institute - an aunt she never knew existed - she wants none of the responsibility. Apart from her grandmother, Kitty, who has Alzheimer's, Iris is the only family member left.The great-aunt, Esme Lennox, is Kitty's younger sister. She's been locked away in Cauldstone for the last sixty years - since she was sixteen. Why? That is Esme's story to tell. But she was locked away, and vanished, and forgotten. Now she enters Iris' life, and what was started all those years ago must find an ending, a resolution. Esme's story is gripping. Esme the girl comes across strongly, vividly, an immediately familiar presence. An odd child, she grew into a modern teen who eschewed marriage and wanted to go to university. She didn't abide by the family's class-conscious values and was always going out without a hat on, or would forget her gloves. These weren't her only crimes. There's also a boy, and where there's a boy, there's trouble. The novel revolves around Esme's past, from her childhood in India to her school life in Edinburgh, and her early experiences in the asylum. Her story is complemented by Iris's messy life and Kitty's meandering thoughts as she strays randomly through the paths of her memories. Like an intricate tapestry, the scenes from the past weave together to make a whole, a powerful, moving story that's simple, cruel and tragic.What makes this story so beautiful and flow so well, is the prose. Told mostly in present tense, it shifts to past effortlessly, usually without me even noticing. That's actually hard to do - shift seamlessly, that is! I did have to read the first two pages twice, to get into the flow of how it was written, but after that it was like being picked up on a breath of memory and carried along, weightless, but ever observant. There are no chapter breaks, only section breaks to separate voice, and this adds to that feeling of flow, that great momentum that the story has. From the first page, you need to know what happens, and what happened. It is fitting to use present tense, to create a sense of timelessness, a sense of every memory having relevance. Kitty's memories don't stick out and jar, told as they are in Kitty's confused, muddled voice - confused but clear; that kind of paradox that's hard to describe but can be created nonetheless. Her voice is distinct, different from Esme's troubled mind. Again the use of present tense works to allow their memories to merge, to show how lost they are in these memories. It's like music, a song being played, the instruments breath and memory and loss and hope. It's horrible to think how easy it was to lock up your wayward daughter or reluctant (or "over-sexed") wife or troublesome sister. Esme wasn't an exceptional case. And this carried on well into the twentieth century. It is just one kind of crime against women. You'd like to think that it couldn't happen anymore but it does, in various forms.Some people found that there were too many loose ends, and the ending was too vague and open. I didn't find that there were any loose ends. Everything came together satisfactorily, and without any padding (it's a pretty short book, especially with how fast you can read it). And the ending, the ending was so right for the story. Yes it is somewhat open, but enough is shown to see where it will probably go, for good or worse.I wanted to share some quotes, as examples of prose. As usual, I didn't mark any exceptional quotes - this time because I was so caught up in the story it was hard to stop reading. I would share some drawn randomly, but I find that without context the magic falls away and the words become just ... words. Interesting how that happens.As a last note, my thanks to those who recommended this book. You were right!
What do You think about The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox (2013)?
The opening of this novel reflects the simple beauty and power of O'Farrell's writing and I was immediately drawn into this story.“Let us begin with two girls at a dance. They are at the edge of the room. One sits on a chair, opening and shutting a dance-card with gloved fingers. The other stands beside, watching the dance unfold: the circling couples, the clasped hands, the drumming shoes, the whirling skirts, the bounce of the floor. It is the last hour of the year and the windows behind them are blank with night. The seated girl is dressed in something pale, Esme forgets what, the other in a dark red frock that doesn’t suit her. She has lost her gloves. It begins here. Or perhaps not.”It was not long before my heart was broken for Esme Lennox, a precocious , inquisitive, sometimes misbehaving little girl who is not what her parents want her to be. She suffers the cruelty of her mother and father in some scenes that are just so difficult to read. Esme is tied to a chair so she doesn't crawl under the table during dinner. Everyone jumps up and leaves the table ( it wasn’t clear to me why ) but they forget about her. The family goes on a trip and leaves Esme , as they don’t want to deal with her, home with the nursemaid and her baby brother Hugo. While they are gone, the unthinkable happens , and Esme is alone for several days and traumatized by what has happened. The cruelty continues and Esme mother won’t speak to her or even look at her.There are three narratives in the story : flashbacks of Esme from her childhood days in India and then in Scotland, and from her sister Kitty from those same times and places. The third is the present day story of Iris, Kitty’s granddaughter. These move swiftly from past to present to past again without any warning. It was at first a little confusing but then it becomes clear as the book moves on who is thinking or speaking.If you’ve read the description of the book, you know that Esme has been in a mental institution for 60 years. This reminded me so much of a book I recently read , "What She Left Behind" also about a woman committed because her father said so , not because she was insane.”Before the end I was able to figure out something about Esme that is not revealed until near the end but the book was no less captivating . As for the end - I woke up this morning thinking about it. I was not expecting it. This is a moving story that won’t leave me anytime soon.
—Angela M
Locked up decades ago for such outlandish behavior as dancing, Esme Lennox is finally released when her asylum is shut down. Esme is thrust into the care of her grand-niece Iris, a modern young women whose struggle to overcome her "unnatural" love for her step-brother gives her more in common with Esme than either could imagine. As Iris tries to unravel the mystery of Esme's existence, she learns more (though ultimately not enough) about her hidden family history, information she never obtained from her Alzheimers-suffering grandmother Kitty. The shocking ending packs a powerful punch, and leaves an indelible mark on the reader. This remarkable novel tells the sad tale of the fate that awaited women who didn't fit society's mold not all that many years ago. Marked, and then punished, by events beyond her control, Esme was locked up at 16 and lived in a virtual prison for her entire life. Iris is also living a life constrained by society's expectations, denying her love of her stepbrother yet unable to form a strong connection with anyone else. The parallel stories highlight the similarities between these two women, but offer hope that Iris will be able to break free in a way Esme never could. From beginning to end this book made me sad and angry by turns, and maintaining that level of intense negative feeling was draining to say the least. Though the ending was like a punch in the gut, I applaud the author's ability to stay true to the tone of the novel (though I might have wished for a happier ending). I also wouldn't have minded another chapter to fill in at the end, but suspect that would have diluted the power of the narrative. I highly recommend reading this book, but not if you're already having a bad day!
—Colleen
An amazing novel. I'd put this off for a year or more - always something new and crisp to get to first! - and really wish I'd read this a long time ago.Sometimes books about mental illness and split time periods are very confusing, but I didn't find this with Esme at all. I was riveted. I was aching to know just what had caused Esme to be locked in an 'asylum' for more than six decades. What her connection was to Iris, what secrets the past would bring to light.Often, the twists in this kind of story fall flat, or are obvious. when it dawned on me the truth about Esme I was open-mouthed for a moment. A proper "no!!" moment. Such a well-told story. Outrageous that women were once locked up for such minor misbehaviours as demonstrated by characters here in Esme's home, real history kept alive for my generation for whom this is quite unreal. I really felt the time period of Esme's youth, attitudes and the world feeling quite vivid. Esme herself had more than one voice - that of the old woman locked away, the young girl struggling to conform, the wilful teenager that we know is imminently to be detained (but why?).The reveals are masterly executed, I didn't see them coming and found myself frowning with confusion that I hadn't thought of these possibilities.Iris in the present, a relative of Esme's, as well as her deteriorating older sister both are rounded characters that play equal roles in the story, Iris's reaction to Esme's incarceration a mirror of our own, her grandmother's dementia and babble revealing secrets gradually and artfully.A modern masterpiece I would say. So easy to lap it up, full of real shocks and beautiful writing. And an eye-widening ending that isn't explicit but lets you draw your own conclusions. Wow.I thought of Elizabeth is Missing as well as Grace Henderson Says it All as I read this. But this is better than either. My first Maggie O'Farrell and probably not my last.
—Katy Noyes
