During the journey, Esme struggles with the guilt of surviving the typhoid outbreak and her mother’s refusal to speak to her since Hugo’s death.Įsme and Kitty are shocked by the differences between the Scottish and Indian landscapes. Vowing to never speak of what happened, the Lennoxes leave India for Scotland. When her parents and sister return several days later, they find Esme in a state of shock, still clutching Hugo. The next morning, with Jamila also dead from typhoid, Esme locks herself inside the family library with Hugo’s lifeless body. However, Hugo becomes ill and by nightfall, Esme is left holding Hugo’s dead body as Jamila languishes on a pallet nearby. Esme and Kitty’s parents take a trip and leave Esme behind as punishment for going shoeless outside she enjoys her freedom and time alone with baby Hugo and Jamila. When Esme and Kitty’s emotionally distant mother Ishbel gives birth to a son, Hugo, Esme becomes attached to him and relishes entertaining him under the watchful eye of Jamila, her nanny. Kitty is eager to please her parents and become the favored daughter.
From an early age, Esme asserts that she will not conform to anyone’s expectations, and rebels against her parents’ authority at every turn. This guide is based on the 2006 ebook edition published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.Ĭontent Warning: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox includes child death, demonization of mental illness, a relationship between former stepsiblings, and the sexual assault of a teenage girl.Įuphemia “Esme” Lennox lives with her mother, father, and older sister Kitty in British-occupied India during the 1930s. Her novel Hamnet won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020 and her most recent novel The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year in 2022. She published her debut novel After You’d Come in 2000 and has since published seven more novels, one memoir, and one children’s book. O’Farrell was born in Northern Ireland and has lived in both Wales and Scotland, and uses her knowledge of these unique landscapes to create atmospheric settings for her novels. Through a twisted entanglement of three different perspectives, O’Farrell tells the story of not only Esme Lennox but also two other women whose destinies are inextricably linked to hers. O’Farrell’s work often focuses on women trapped physically, emotionally, and psychologically by forces over which they have no control, and this novel is no exception. Maggie O’Farrell’s novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, published in 2006, is the author’s fourth novel and tackles the grim history of forced incarcerations of women and the devastating effects of family secrets.
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