Esme Lennox spent her formative years in India, moving in her teens to Great Britain. She has an older sister, Kitty, and had a much loved younger brother, Hugh, who died when he was a toddler. Her parents are distant with her, much preferring the company of Kitty who is happy to conform to expected norms. Esme, on the other hand, goes to the beat of her own drum. She is creative, curious, imaginative, ignores convention, and is very spirited. At times she is impetuous and impulsive, much to her family's chagrin. Esme is not interested in going to social gatherings, does not want to get married, and is often an embarrassment to Kitty and her mother.
When Esme is about 17 years old, her parents commit her to a psychiatric institution for the sole reason that her behavior is not to their liking. Esme assumes that her time in this institution will be limited but she is not released until the hospital closes down, 61 years after she's been committed.
Esme is released into the care of her great-niece Iris, who knew nothing of Esme's existence. Iris is Kitty's granddaughter, and Kitty never ever mentioned the existence of Esme, her sister. Now, Kitty has dementia and is no use for getting a history of Esme. Iris is not sure what to do about Esme. The hostel she took Esme to was unfit for her so she puts Esme up in her guest room. Interestingly, the room Esme is given in Iris's house is familiar to her. This was the house that Esme and her family resided in when they moved to Great Britain.
The novel goes back and forth in time and the reader is privy to Esme's tormented childhood and adolescence. Esme tries to survive in an environment that is unsupportive, stifling, and cold. She has no chance to thrive and, on the few occasions when she attempts to thrive, her parents are appalled. Esme much prefers her own company to potential suiters. She loved her deceased brother Hugh so much that it took two adults to pull him out of her arms after he died.
What secrets are Esme holding? The book alludes to a darkness in Esme's family, one that stifled and stole the life out of her. Esme spent sixty-one years in a psychiatric institution for being a unique and spirited young woman with no sign of mental illness. And, to top it off, she never had a visitor the whole time she was hospitalized. No one from her family ever came to see her despite the hospital being only two miles from their home.
Once Esme is released from the hospital, a new world opens up to her and, piece by piece, she begins to make sense of the world she is now living in. As Esme makes sense of the world, she sees that the truths she becomes aware of are harbingers of something that will leave the reader in shock.
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Popular Highlights in this book
We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.Highlighted by 949 Kindle readers- It is always the meaningless tasks that endure: the washing, the cooking, the clearing, the cleaning. Never anything majestic or significant, just the tiny rituals that hold together the seams of human life.Highlighted by 318 Kindle readers
- And Esme sees what might be. She shuts her mouth, closes her throat, folds her hands over each other and she does the thing she has perfected. Her speciality. To absent yourself, to make yourself vanish.Highlighted by 164 Kindle readers
- It is always the meaningless tasks that endure: the washing, the cooking, the clearing, the cleaning. Never anything majestic or significant, just the tiny rituals that hold together the seams of human life.Highlighted by 110 Kindle readers
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Top reviews from other countries
Patricia Grundy
Great little book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 15, 2016M. Fabrice Daboval
The vanishing act of Esme Lennox
Reviewed in France on September 7, 2014