“The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox” by Maggie O’Farrell

It isn’t often that I have five  uninterrupted hours to sit and read. But solo air travel  does have its benefits! I started reading this book while waiting for my (delayed) flight, and turned the last page while my eager fellow travelers were still clogging the aisle waiting for the doors to open at our destination.

TVAOEL gets off to a running start with Iris Lockhart in her vintage shop in Edinburgh. She is an intriguing character in her own right, but the real story centers around Esme, the great-aunt Iris never knew she had. We soon find out that Esme had been committed to an institution more than sixty years ago, but at first we don’t know why. We spend most of the book learning the details, skipping between past and present. 

I’ve decided I should have read this book years ago. I don’t know why I put it off, really. It piqued my interest from the moment I first heard about it (though of course I don’t remember exactly when that was). But it’s one of the good O’Farrells. Not the best (I still hold After You’d Gone in highest esteem, and Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait were both excellent), but I rank it as fourth best. I probably don’t even need to mention that the writing was excellent. But the characters were also solid and real. And while I guessed at a major reveal pretty early on, the ending took me by surprise. That’s generally a good thing, and definitely so in this case.