Review: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Book: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell
Finished: January 2010
Pages: 256
Challenges:
**Read & Review **A-Z **Rainbow Connection** New Authors** Reading From My Shelves**

What an interesting book--which I loved! It isn't very long, but it sure packs a wallop.

Set in Scotland starting in the 1920's, we are introduced to a family. A very snobby, proper family, living in India. Because of certain events, the family eventually migrates back to Scotland and the ancestral home--bringing with them their two daughters who are getting close to needing to be married off. Their names? Kitty and Esme.

Esme never has seemed to fit into proper society. She is a free spirit and headstrong--both factors which contribute to her finally being committed to a mental hospital.
For 60 years.
Where NO ONE ever visited her.

The story is also about Iris, Kitty's granddaughter, in present day. She is contacted by the mental hospital and told that the hospital is closing, her great Aunt Esme has been screened and rehabilitated and needs to be picked up! Iris has never even heard of her Aunt Esme.

The life of Esme is pieced together both in her own voice and in Kittys-written in that stream of consciousness style--because she has Alzheimer's. The web of this family, the coldness of Esme's parents, the story of what happened to Esme all make for a gripping story with a powerful, if not tragic ending.

The saddest part of reading this book, is knowing that things like this used to happen. It happened to women a lot back then--involuntary commitment by family members or a husband because they did not conform to society's view of them, or they didn't make someone happy or meet their expectations. Or maybe they were really depressed or suffered from menopause or postpartum depression. For many, many women, they did not deserve to be locked up in a mental hospital and subjected to the "treatments" that were used on them. I had a pharmacist tell me that she attended a conference one time that addressed this issue from our past. She said they have done studies and found that when the birth control pill was made available, which also ushered in the idea of hormone replacement for women in peri-menopause, the admissions of women to mental hospitals decreased dramatically. I wish I could remember the statistics she told me as they were very stunning.