Boyhood
David Keenan
Independent Scottish Booksellers
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Independent Scottish Bookshop
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Scottish BookAuthor: Maggie O'Farrell
£9.95
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox follows Iris Lockhart, who learns her family secretly confined a rebellious great-aunt to a psychiatric institution for decades. As Esme is released, buried memories and family silence begin to unravel the truth. For readers of literary historical fiction about family secrets, identity and women erased from history.
dispatched by Royal Mail Tracked 48
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Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is troubled by its youngest daughter, Esme, outspoken and unconventional, repeatedly embarrassing them in polite society. The feeling grows that something will have to be done.
Years later, Iris Lockhart receives a letter telling her she has a great aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. Iris has never heard the name Esme Lennox. When she tries to ask, the one person who might explain, her grandmother Kitty, seems unable to answer.
As Iris looks for the truth, she is faced with questions that will not settle. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution. How can a person be so completely erased from a family’s history. The story moves between what is remembered, what is withheld, and what has been made unsayable.