Description from Amazon
Esme was a woman edited out of her family's history, and when, sixty years later, she is released from care, a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had. The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh - of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal - but above all it is the story of Esme, a fiercely intelligent, unconventional young woman, and of the terrible price she is made to pay for her family's unhappiness ...

A fascinating book but at a human level heartbreaking not just for Esme and Iris but because of the knowledge that this institutionalisation was very common practice; by no means was Esme’s history unique. O’Farrell writes with her usual style, a slightly obtuse, modernist stylisation, but this time hitting a magnificent balance between obscurity and revelation, none the less the diverse voices flow as one, as the truth is revealed.

WILD RELEASE NOTES: Taking to Chery Tree meetup.


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Happy reading.

I ended up with this book in the book swap at The Cherry Tree meet up earlier. I have read other books by Maggie O'Farrell and actually thought this was on my wishlist as I'd wanted to read this for quite a while. So really pleased I got to keep this one after a few steals! ;-)

I'm taking this on holiday with me and hope to read and then release. So assuming I get enough time to read I'll release in somewhere in Dorset when I've finished.

I read this while on my holiday's last week. I thought the story was clever and moving and did wonder how the author would end it. I found it a bit irritating that the flashbacks that told much of the story jumped between Esme and her sister Kitty - although we didn't meet Kitty until the end. It just felt a bit...disjointed to me. I do think that Kitty's story did add an extra aspect to the whole story and gave a better understanding as to why Esme had spent her entire adult life in psychiatric care.

I left this in the library of the Marsham Court Hotel which is on Russell-Cotes Road (behind the Royal Bath Hotel). They have a little library where residents can take or swap books for a small donation to the Bournemouth Kidney Association (I think).

I hope who ever finds it is enjoying their stay in this friendly hotel.