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Welcome to The Literary Pig's blog - a safe haven for all those afflicted with
the unbearable urge to write.

Monday 2 January 2012

12 Days of a LitPig Christmas: 9

On the 9th day of Christmas my LitPig brought to me ...

NINE BILL BRYSONS
EIGHT PENELOPE LIVELYS
SEVEN KATE ATKINSONS
SIX UNSUED COOKBOOKS
FIVE CRIME FESTS
FOUR DAVID MITCHELLS
THREE MARGARET ATWOODS
TWO HOMER SAGAS
and
A BOX SET OF ROALD DAHL BOOKS

Each day I want to share the writing of an author that I read for the first time in 2011.   These are my personal choices - you may know many of them, but perhaps one or two will be new to you ... So why not try a new author in 2012.  
September 2011:
MAGGIE O'FARRELL - The Vanishing of Esme Lennox
I read this very quickly as the story grabs you and the prose keeps you hooked to the very end.  Esme Lennox is an elderly woman who is released from an institution, where she has spent all of her adult life, into the care of a younger relative.  The point of view changes across several characters and flashbacks to Esme's youth in Indian and then Scotland.  We learn how and why Esme came to be taken from her family and put into a mental institution and the conclusion is tragic.  This was an intense, but totally absorbing novel with a sudden and dramatic ending.  I am definitely seeking more of Maggie's novels to read in 2012.

Other novels by Maggie O'Farrell

  • After You'd Gone (2000)
  • My Lover's Lover (2002)
  • The Distance Between Us (2004)
  • The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006)
  • The Hand That First Held Mine (2010)

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