Instructions for a Heatwave

By: Maggie O'Farrell

Narrated by: John Lee

Sophisticated, intelligent, impossible to put down, Maggie O’Farrell’s beguiling novels—After You’d Gone, winner of a Betty Trask Award; The Distance Between Us, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Hand That First Held Mine, winner of the Costa Novel Award; and her unforgettable bestseller The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox—blend richly textured psychological drama with page-turning suspense. Instructions for a Heatwave finds her at the top of her game, with a novel about a family crisis set during the legendary British heatwave of 1976.

Gretta Riordan wakes on a stultifying July morning to find that her husband of forty years has gone to get the paper and vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Gretta’s three grown children converge on their parents’ home for the first time in years: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her and a blighted past that has driven away the younger sister she once adored; and Aoife, the youngest, now living in Manhattan, a smart, immensely resourceful young woman who has arranged her entire life to conceal a devastating secret.

Maggie O’Farrell writes with exceptional grace and sensitivity about marriage, about the mysteries that inhere within families, and the fault lines over which we build our lives—the secrets we hide from the people who know and love us best. In a novel that stretches from the heart of London to New York City’s Upper West Side to a remote village on the coast of Ireland, O’Farrell paints a bracing portrait of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.

©2013 Maggie O'Farrell (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Acutely observed...revelatory, redemptive, and moving.... There is a deliciousness to this novel, a warmth and readability that render it unputdownable and will surely make it a hit. O’Farrell has done it again." (Joanna Briscoe, The Guardian)

"A literary event...evocative, articulate, and joyously readable.... O’Farrell’s talent for drawing intriguing but relatable characters is eclipsed only by a rare gift for description that is almost photographic in its imagery.... An author at the top of her game." (Charlotte Heathcote, The Sunday Express)

"Humorous, humane, and perceptive.... O’Farrell depicts relationships with piercing acuity in haunting, intense prose...a deliciously insightful writer...Her sharp but humane eye dissects every form of human interaction." (Leyla Sanai, The Independent on Sunday)

Charming story …

But doesn’t hold a candle to the story of Esme Lennox in depth or surprise.

Choppy

Not my favorite book by this author Too choppy. I was never sure if the narrator was talking about the present or the past. Story line was a bit weak but the narrator had a pleasant voice.

Just ok

This was a pretty easy read. There weren't any characters that I really loved though. Overall it was ok but nothing to write home about.

Not Hamnet, but still a good story

I believe I have read almost all the books written by O'Farrell available on Audible. She's an amazing story teller. While this is a different type of story from Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait - it's set in the mid-1970s and focused on the dynamics of one family - it's still incredibly well written and engaging.

I appreciate that it's read by John Lee, too. He can be so over the top sometimes, but I prefer it to the author reading her own work (usually).

Another Gem from O'Farrell

Once again, Maggie O'Farrell creates a set of well-developed characters and turns her focus to complex family dynamics. The year is 1976, and England is in the midst of a heatwave. While his wife Gretta follows her usual morning bread baking routine, recent retiree Robert Riordan goes for his morning walk--and doesn't return. As most of us would do in a time of crisis, Gretta calls the family together for support. There's her favorite, Monica, a childless woman married to a second husband whose daughters despise her; Michael Francis, a high school history teacher who hates his job and whose ideal family may not be so ideal behind closed doors; and Aiofe, the so-called black sheep, who never seemed to get anything right and had moved to New York eight years earlier to escape the constant criticism and disappointments.

As they reunite to decide how to proceed in finding Robert, repressed emotions, individual frailties, and long-held secrets come to the surface. O'Farrell does a masterful job of moving from one perspective to another and between past and present, showing us the truth within each character and the source of their misperceptions about one another. Towards the end, we learn that the children aren't the only ones living lives built of facades: Gretta and Robert have their own buried secrets.

In the end, many threads are left to be untangled. The lack of a neatly tied-up conclusion might be considered a flaw, but it also highlights the fact that the relationships among the Riordans and her characters' psyches are O'Farrell's intended focus, more so than the story of a missing person. The writing here is quite fine; not only are the descriptions vivid and the dialogue believable, but the author has a gift for subtly evoking a reader's empathy even for characters who may not be on their best behavior. Instructions for a Heatwave may not be the best Maggie O'Farrell novel I've read, but it comes pretty close.

John Lee is one of my all-time favorite narrators, and he gets to use his wonderful brogue in this one--a delight to listen to!

Superb narration

The narrator is excellent. What a talent. Amazing character development and I’ll miss hearing about the ongoing conversations and interactions with this family. Maggie O can spin a story!

Compelling

…Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Maggie O'Farrell is such a talent. Outstanding characters told with love and kindness. So well written.
Outstanding narration; simply perfection.

Left wanting more

MOF does not disappoint- downright normal lives containing everything from tedium to tragedy, portrayed in delicious details. She plays on a sense of time that is simultaneously slowed way down and speeded up. Delightful.

Three siblings meet to find their missing father

O'Farrell writes sympathetic characters, and that's an important issue for me. I have to be able to identify with at least one in any book. Here, each one - even the unlikable, has some redeeming characteristic. A good depiction of adult family relationships just as each is reaching a crisis point in his or her life. There was only one thing I had trouble believing: One sister is illiterate. By now she's figured out how to hide it. But is it really possible that she made it all the way through her school years without anyone ever suspecting she might have a learning disability - or discovering that she never learned to read?

lovely Irish lilt to the narrative

started a bit slow but the rhythm of the language and development of the story soon drew me in.