Item: Instructions for a Heatwave
Rating: 4
Author: Catherine

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
Publication date: February 28, 2013
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Childhood, Literary

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In 1976 England was in the midst of a terrible drought and heat wave. It’s an inauspicious and unexpected time for a happily married, retired man to go missing, but Robert does, taking only his keys and his passport. His wife Gretta is left in a frazzled state and his adult children have all been called to come home and look for him in Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Instructions for a Heatwave.

Michael Francis is the oldest and the only son. He’s a quiet, passive man with an inner dialogue of anger because his marriage is disappearing and he’s not sure why. Monica, the middle child is on her second marriage and is now the stepmother to two sullen girls who want nothing to do with her. Aoife was a difficult child with her own demons who left the country as soon as she was an adult and never looked back. She lives in NYC.

Once they’ve all been drawn back together in Instructions O’Farrell uses Robert’s disappearance as the pretense for teasing out the threads of their lives to untangle how they ended up where they have. For Gretta, there are reminiscences of her early days with her husband while for Michael Francis, Monica, and Aoife there are the missteps, lost opportunities, and mistakes that make up their lives. Including those that have come between them. For Monica and Aoife it’s the estrangement that occurred after a childhood spent sharing the same bedroom. Events and secrets created a distance neither would bridge.

The characters and events in Instructions come together with the tired, washed out feeling of having been enervated by too much heat for too long. O’Farrell has the most exquisite ability to create a natural environment that clearly mimics her characters inner discomfort and ragged behavior. She writes of the everyday details with a simplicity that makes them instantly recognizable and relatable. The same is true of the emotions unfurling in the novel. There’s nothing flowery in her descriptions, but instances such as a fight between siblings or the pain of a mother who feels her family has gone wrong in some way strike deep and resonate.

Instructions for a Heatwave is a small story. It’s not a mystery or thriller, beyond the past each of us carries that others know nothing about, but that can circle back on us. It’s O’Farrell’s portrayal, her vivid recreation of the things most of us overlook, that gives the novel its depth and makes this another story that strengthens her position as an author whose writing always thrills me.