num_pages: 245
description: Set between the 1930s, and the present, Maggie O'Farrell's new novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family's history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had. The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh - of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal - but above all it is the story of Esme, a fiercely intelligent, unconventional young woman, and of the terrible price she is made to pay for her family's unhappiness. This is vintage Maggie O'Farrell: an impassioned, intense, haunting family drama - a stunning imagining of a life stolen, and reclaimed.
language: English
title: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
titlecomplete: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
genres: Fiction, Historical, Family, Mystery, Book Club, Scotland, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Audiobook
ratings_count: 39923
places: India, Edinburgh, Scotland
publisher: London: Headline Review