The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
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By Maggie O'Farrell
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1 review
Maggie O’Farrell is a consistent ""Sunday Times"" bestseller in both hardback and paperback. Her novels are word of mouth phenomena: AFTER YOU’D GONE"" ""has now sold 300,000 copies, and there are three quarters of a million Maggie O’Farrell novels in print.
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Almost the entire book group managed to finish this book and they almost all enjoyed it too!
We found that having no chapters made this book a little tricky in terms of finding places to stop, but that the different voices within the book were very clear meaning we didn't get confused even with the lack of chapters.
We had a long discussion about how women were treated in this paternalistic version of the world, and sometimes they still are in this day and age. We felt that we needed a little bit more about how Esme lived in the institution, what was her life like etc. We did get a little of this but we wanted more just so we could understand things a little better. We were also interested in finding out a little more about how places like these closed down, it all just seemed so sudden and with so little thought for the people living there.
We liked the ending of the book but we do worry for Esme, what exactly will happen to her. Given how long she has been institutionalised it could be difficult for her to get used to living out in the real world.
Overall we gave this book 8 out of 10.
