It’s been rather warm here over the past couple of months (except, of course, the last week), so this felt like a very thematic book to tackle this summer. I haven’t read many of Maggie O’Farrell’s books – in fact, before this, I’d only read one. But that one made such an impression on me that I have quite a high opinion of her abilities as a writer because of it. It was Hamnet, a book that didn’t appeal to me much based on the premise, but that had me completely enthralled by the second chapter. So I went into this knowing that it’s one of her earlier novels, so might not be as accomplished, but also expecting that her ability to create a whole world within her words would still be here. I wasn’t wrong.
The concept of this book is interesting (a father goes out to get a newspaper and doesn’t come home), but ends up taking a back seat to her focus on the members of the Riordan family. The book takes us through the lives of each of the Riordan children. There’s Michael Francis, whose family life is falling apart because of a betrayal and his wife’s need to find a place for herself in the world outside of her home. He doesn’t really understand or like the changes in her, and is at a loss when it comes to understanding how to support her and rebuild their connection. Then there’s Monica, the daughter whose first marriage fell apart and whose second marriage doesn’t quite fit – in no small part because she’s the second wife (and second best, she feels) to a man whose two kids who dislike her. And finally there’s Aoife, the youngest daughter and a headstrong, independent, somewhat troubled character. She has moved across the Atlantic to New York City where she has a job she loves but is messing up due to an issue she won’t face and a relationship with a man who is on the run from the draft. Each of these three children shares their views on their mother, who is troubled in her own ways. She’s Irish and deeply opinionated on the decisions her children make in their lives. Meanwhile she is an inconsistent personality who has become more so due to a seemingly unsupervised use of various medications.
The family is not, in any sense, tightly knit. But the sudden disappearance of their father brings the children home, and in doing so we learn even more about the history of the family based on the relationships between the three siblings. There is love, but also anger, hurt and mis-communication. And more than a few secrets. Each needs to resolve these issues, but none of them are aware of it.
The novel lives in these people’s intricate mental landscapes. None are dramatic, but they are so interesting that they will draw the reader in as more details are revealed. I was completely invested in finding out what was going to happen to each, how they were going to resolve their problems and when each was going to face the incontrovertible facts of their lives that they have been willfully avoiding. There is resolution to the initial story, but by the time I got to it, I was strangely unconcerned about it. I just wanted to know more about each of the people I’d met within the pages of this book.
I felt like, as expected, Hamnet was superior in its smoothness and tone, but this book held so many of the elements that made it so impossible to put down. I didn’t particularly like any of these characters… and yet, I couldn’t stop reading. I went straight from this book to another by the author (I Am, I Am, I Am) and am planning to continue on with her back catalogue. I trust her abilities so much I even bought the audiobook of her newest book, The Marriage Portrait, despite the fact that I have no interest in the topic. I expect to love it. Her writing is just that good.
It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back.
The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share. – Goodreads
Book Title: Instructions for a Heatwave
Author: Maggie O’Farrell
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: Tinder Press
Released: February 28, 2013
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Family, Relationships
Pages: 324
Date Read: July 6-21, 2024
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.74/5 (438 ratings)