THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX by MAGGIE O' FARRELL

THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX

BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL

THE BLURB:-

Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.

Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released.

Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox and the one person who should know more, her grandmother Kitty, seems unable to answer Iris's questions. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for one person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

THE REALITY:-

This really happened. If a woman didn't “fit in” or was passionate and outspoken, then her husband or her father could have her put into a mental asylum with only a signature from a GP.  Scary and unimaginable nowadays.

I have some personal experience of this. It later transpired that my paternal grandmother, who I believed had died when my father was three, was actually my longest living grandparent, dying when I was six. I recently found out the exact information whilst researching my family tree. As a teenager, it transpired that she “could be still alive” (she was not, by this point) and had actually spent her life in a mental hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown brought on by postnatal depression after having five children (including one who died at birth) in seven years. According to my mother, it was something my father would never talk about- she "went away for good” when he was eight and in those days these kind of things were just not discussed. It's something that should never have happened, wouldn't happen nowadays and is, quite frankly, barbaric. My uncle did some research into her life 25 years ago and I based a small character in my first novel, The Reject's Club, around this theme. I might elaborate upon this more in my second novel, through a different fictitious character and an alternative mental illness.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, it comes with some shock that when I was a feisty teenager, prone to answering back (I prefer to call it sticking up for myself) that I was threatened (on more than one occasion) with being “put away”. When I later developed bulimia, I couldn't confide in my parents for fear that they would deliver on their threat. I later found out that things like that no longer happen (we now have care in the community). Thanks, parents- I love you too. How my father could be like that, I do not know. But then, I suppose I have no idea about his exact experiences and sufferings, so it's wrong for me to judge.

As you can see this book touched a personal nerve in me. I've said it before and I will say it again: I find the attitudes of that generation (post Victorian and pre 1960s) SERIOUSLY OFFENSIVE!

Enough of going off on a tangent! Esme, the institutionalized lady comes out of the asylum sixty years on, seemingly sane. It's a nice twist that her sister, the person partially responsible for her incarceration (and another wrongdoing that I shan't spoil for you) is now the one with a broken mind, in the from of Alzheimer's.

At first I wasn't sure about the style of this book, written in the present tense and with no chapters; instead just sections running into one another. But as you get to know all of the interesting characters, it seems to work. Esme's anger and frustration was so real you could taste it and Kitty didn't escape with a charmed life either. If there is such a thing as karma, she certainly had her share of it metered out. I liked the way the story unfolded, with some unexpected twists, and also the way the ending leaves you with something to work out and think about...