Cambridge Book Club, July 2023 - The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

We will be meeting as usual on the last Thursday of every month - this month we will be meeting at 7pm at The Alex on Gwydir Street on the 27th July.

A table for the Book Club is booked under the name 'Mary'.

There is limited space and we don't want to overwhelm the venue, so we have limited the number of attendees.
The pub is very accommodating and will try to provide more seats if needed, but if you find you cannot attend for any reason please change your attendance in the group so others can take your place.

Street parking is free after 6.30pm. There is also a multistory nearby, the Grafton East Car Park.

The book for June is 'The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox' by Maggie O'Farrell, kindly suggested by Sally.

At each meeting, everyone who attends may nominate a book for the following month. The book is decided by a dice roll. Ideally, we will limit the length to approximately 400 pages so that people will be able to finish reading before the next meeting. If for whatever reason you can't finish or don't want to finish, that's totally fine. Just come along anyway and discuss what you liked and disliked.

"We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents."

"It is always the meaningless tasks that endure: the washing, the cooking, the clearing, the cleaning. Never anything majestic or significant, just the tiny rituals that hold together the seams of human life."

'Maggie O’Farrell takes readers on a journey to the darker places of the human heart, where desires struggle with the imposition of social mores. This haunting story explores the seedy past of Victorian asylums, the oppression of family secrets, and the way truth can change everything.

In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?

Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.'