The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

I read this World Book Night 2012 gift along with the other members of the Hillside North End Reading Group.

Much Madness is divinest Sense -

To a discerning eye -

Much Sense - the starkest Madness -

'Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail -

Assent - and you are sane -

Demur - and you're straight away dangerous -

And handled with a chain - 

                                  Emily Dickinson

Maggie O'Farrell uses this epigraph at the beginning of this novel, first published in 2006.  I either skipped over or ignored it before but now I see how apposite it is.  

Euphemia (Esme) spends 61 years, five months and four days in a mental institution.  She was diagnosed with dementia praecox but her real condition was that she was an inconvenience to her family.  She is released to her great niece, who was unaware of her existence even though she has a photograph of her in her flat, because keeping her has become inconveniently costly to the local authority.  

The story of misunderstanding and revenge is told from three points of view, Esme's and her great niece Iris' in the third person, and the first person ramblings of Kitty, Esme's sister who has Alzheimer's and lives in a nursing home.

I loved this book and got so much more from the second reading.  Its short and written in a very accessible style.  Look out for a copy there are doing the rounds as a World Book Night release.