INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE by MAGGIE O' FARRELL

INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE

BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL

THE BLURB:-

It's July 1976 and London is in the grips of a heatwave. It hasn't rained for months, the 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 may have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.

THE REALITY:-

Maggie O' Farrell's novels are very easy to read. They tend not to be overly long (this one was 324 pages) and the character observation absolutely brilliant, so it's very easy to get into her work. This one was no exception, but I though the title was pretty lame and uninspiring.  But, get beyond that and you're in for a pleasant ride!

I was the author's age in 1976 (I turned five in the July) and remember this legendary summer being hot, but no hotter than other summers, or so it seemed. During the 1970s we got what I call 'proper' weather; scorching summers and the presence of autumn indicated by foggy mornings and masses of daddy long legs swarming and sticking to windows, winters with knee-deep snow and broken down oil tankers at school and finally, spring entering like a promising, wet yet mild rumba. The only concession to water shortage that I can recall was my mother watering the plants with the mucky dishwater. Enough of my meanderings: what I'm trying to say was that it was easy for me to place myself into the period of the novel. This was an era where Aoife's dyslexia unfortunately resulted in her being labelled weird; so, so, sad, given the recognition we give to the condition nowadays. This was a time when, ten years previously, Michael Francis had to marry his pregnant girlfriend and a time when Monica, a couple of years before, had self-aborted her child.

The characters in this book are incredibly well described, through not just their appearances but their speech patterns and foibles. The author certainly did her research as to how Aoife's condition presents itself and the details are immense.  I liked that the family were Irish Catholics as my partner is from this background and some of the traits within his family echo themselves in Gretta's. The novelist has a great empathy with all of the five senses, manipulating prose so perfectly that you can imagine yourself right there in the book. London, New York and Ireland are well depicted and I also enjoyed looking at her inspirational Connemara photographs.  The author's grasp of the English language is very good, so much so that I managed to learn some new words during the course of the novel, and I am always pleased when this happens.

I loved the fact that the main subject matter- Gretta- turned out not to be much of a heroine and was a very real human being with faults such as hypocrisy and being liberal with the truth. I'm afraid that, in my experience, her generation were so often flawed in this way.

The book is not without fault. I would have loved to have read about Monica self-aborting her baby, such as how she did it and did Gretta really spill the beans to Joe? Details, please! Monica's relationship with her step-brats also could have been explored a little bit more. Also, I don't think the book reaches a satisfactory conclusion. We need to meet up with Robert again, and hear his explanation. But, give this tale a go. You will certainly find yourself living within the pages of this novel.