What readers think of Instructions for a Heatwave, plus links to write your own review.

This is the story of a family that is—on the surface, at least—picture perfect. But underneath that surface there is trouble—big trouble in the form of long-guarded secrets and outright lies that can only be described as shocking, astonishing, devastating, and even earth-shattering.

Masterfully written by Irish novelist Maggie O'Farrell, this is the story of the Riordan family of London, England. It takes place over three days in July 1976 during a massive heatwave and drought. It's London, so there is no air conditioning. And it is SO hot! The heatwave is making people act oddly…it's getting on their nerves. And (brilliantly) the heatwave is a metaphor for all that is heating up in the Riordan family.

The characters: Gretta and Robert Riordan, both of whom are from Ireland and are devout Catholics, have been together for more than 30 years. They have three grown children:
• Michael Francis, a history teacher, is unhappily married to Claire. They have two children, Hughie and Vita, and live near his parents.
• Monica, just 10 months younger than her brother, is divorced and now remarried to a much older man who has two (difficult, surly) daughters from a previous relationship. She lives about 80 miles northwest of London in an old farmhouse in the country—the same house her husband's ex lived in when they were together.
• Aoife (pronounced ee-fah), who is a decade younger than her siblings, has always been the black sheep of the family. She has escaped to Manhattan where she works as an assistant to a famous photographer. She and Monica had a terrible row years ago that Monica believes ended her first marriage, and the sisters haven't spoken since. Aoife's boyfriend, Gabe, is a draft dodger, who is living in plain sight in New York City rather than escaping to Canada.

The story: Robert recently retired as an assistant bank manager. Early in the morning on Thursday, July 15, he tells his wife he is going out to buy a newspaper, something he does most days. Except on this day, he doesn't come home, and he has cleaned out much of the bank account. Gretta is frantic. She calls Michael Francis and Monica. Michael Francis calls Aoife in New York. Come home! And all three do. While they try to figure out what happened to their father, the hurt feelings, misunderstandings, arguments, and grudges from their past come roaring to life. Each one of them has a deep, dark, extraordinary secret that is eventually revealed.

This is a superb and captivating novel with a multilayered plot about a family that is falling apart and somehow, against all odds, puts itself together again thanks to love, truth, and forgiveness. Our past mistakes don't have to haunt us forever. But we have to learn to forgive each other.

The secret sauce that makes this book so compelling and magical is the writing. Many of the descriptions, especially the quotidian elements of life—how things look, feel, and smell—are so beautiful, so imaginative, so spot-on that I had to stop and reread whole paragraphs over again just to fully savor the writing. What a treat!

My only complaint is that the ending is too abrupt.

I devoured this exceptional book. Highly recommended.

Instructions For A Heatwave is the sixth novel by British author, Maggie O’Farrell. On a July Thursday at the height of Britain’s 1976 heatwave, Robert Riordan goes out as usual for the morning paper but doesn’t return. When no trace of him can be found, his wife, Gretta calls her daughter in Gloucester, Monica, who is having a drama of her own. Eventually, Gretta’s son, Michael Francis manages to contact his younger sister, Aoife in New York, and the siblings come together at their family home to decide what is to be done. It is a gathering filled with tensions, as Aoife and Monica have been estranged for years. Not only that, but undercurrents flow as each character is dealing with shameful secrets of their own. While this could make for heavy going, the dialogue between the characters, the family dynamics and some moments of delicious irony provide a comic relief that lifts the story. As O’Farrell skilfully builds her story, the various mysteries, some from more than thirty years ago, unfold over four days. Abortion, dyslexia, divorce, betrayal, adultery, draft dodging, a dead cat, an Irish convent and a deep abiding love all feature. O’Farrell’s characters are interesting and complex; they are larger than life and so very real. Her prose is a joy to experience: the feel of the heatwave is expertly conveyed and the descriptions are wonderfully evocative. “And then, it seemed to Monica, the baby opened her mouth and started to scream and that she did not stop screaming for a long time. ……She screamed if laid flat, even for a moment…….her legs would work up and down, as if she was a toy with a winding mechanism, her face would crumple in on itself and the room would fill with jagged sounds that could have cut you, if you’d stood too close.” and “She cannot read. She cannot do that thing that other people find so artlessly easy: to see arrangements of inked shapes on a page and alchemise them into meaning.” are just two examples. A brilliant read.

Every time I get to the end of a Maggie O'Farrell novel, I want to scream, “More. What happened next?” O'Farrell always leaves me hanging and Instructions for a Heatwave was no exception. This is a family book, about adult children's frustrations, about efforts to be the “best child” of the three, about running away, about marriage or non-marriage. The adult children's problems are the true basis of this story, not about their run-away father. And it ends up about their relationships with the mother.

Only near the end of the book do we start to learn of the giant hypocrisy of the mother. There is envy, pity, frustration and anger, too. The father disappears – no note, no information for the mother. He just does not come back from getting the newspaper. The three children start gathering near the mother, when they can pull away from their own family/relationship dilemmas. The two sisters are not speaking to each other and have been this way for three years. Wow, how can you hang on to conflict and misunderstanding with your own sister for three years?

When one of the sisters discovers that daddy-dearest has been sending a steady stream of money, every month, to “Assumpta,” things really start to fall apart. These adult children start figuring out what has been happening or not happening with their parents and with each other. The book starts in London in the middle of a heat wave with water rationing and ends in Ireland where the parents were born. And it ends in hope. I can not write anymore because it would spoil your reading.