 First edition | |
| Author | Maggie O'Farrell |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Headline Review |
Publication date | 2006 |
| ISBN | 978-0-75530-843-9 |
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is a novel by Northern Irish author Maggie O'Farrell, published in 2006 by Headline Review, concerning three generations of a Scottish family.
Euphemia Esme Lennox was brought up as a child in India with her elder sister Kathleen (Kitty), but following the death of her baby brother Hugo the family moved to Edinburgh. The plot then shifts to the present day: Iris discovers that she has a great aunt in a psychiatric unit, who has been there for some sixty years. Iris never knew about her great aunt, as her grandmother Kathleen suffering from Alzheimer's, has never revealed that she had a sister. The narrative shifts between Esme's childhood in the 1930s and the present day as Iris tries to discover the truth about what happened to Esme. It is eventually revealed that Esme is in fact Iris's grandmother, becoming pregnant as a result of rape, and due to her incarceration in the asylum the baby was adopted by Kitty.
Tipping the Velvet is a 1998 debut novel by Welsh novelist Sarah Waters. A historical novel set in England during the 1890s, it tells a coming-of-age story about a young woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator, follows her to London, and finds various ways to support herself as she journeys through the city. The picaresque plot elements have prompted scholars and reviewers to compare it to similar British urban adventure stories written by Charles Dickens and Daniel Defoe.
The Secret Garden is a 1993 fantasy drama film directed by Agnieszka Holland, executive-produced by Francis Ford Coppola and distributed by Warner Bros. under their Family Entertainment imprint. Starring Kate Maberly, Heydon Prowse, Andrew Knott and Maggie Smith, the film's screenplay was written by Caroline Thompson, based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It also marked the film debuts for Maberly, Prowse and Knott. The novel was previously adapted in 1919 and 1949.
Esmé or Esmée is an English first name, from the past participle of the Old French verb esmer, "to esteem", thus signifying "esteemed". Another theory is that esmer is an alternative spelling of today's aimer, "to love", thus the name is aimé, meaning "beloved", equivalent to the modern feminine first name "Amy". Originally a masculine name, Esme had become a feminine name by the mid-twentieth century.
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Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Jane Mary Gardam is an English writer of children's and adult fiction. She also writes reviews for The Spectator and The Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards, including the Whitbread Award twice. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.
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