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    Instructions for a Heatwave
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    Instructions for a Heatwave
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    Instructions for a Heatwave
    Audiobook9 hours

    Instructions for a Heatwave

    Written by Maggie O'Farrell

    Narrated by John Lee

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 18, 2013
    ISBN9780804120685
    Unavailable
    Instructions for a Heatwave
    Author

    Maggie O'Farrell

    MAGGIE O'FARRELL was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include The Marriage Portrait, Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), After You'd Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine, and Instructions for a Heatwave. She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. She lives in Edinburgh.

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    Reviews for Instructions for a Heatwave

    3.5/5

    335 ratings38 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I could not finish this book. It just did not seem to go anywhere. I found the writing flowery and clearly each character was supposed to have lots of quirks and flaws and lots of 'oirishness' but I just found it all too laboured and couldn't identify with the characters. Hugely disappointing.
    • 4/5
      The grown children of an Irish family living (well, mostly) in England gather together to deal with the strange disappearance of their father, who went out for a paper one morning and didn't come back. Each of them, as is traditional in this sort of dysfunctional family story, has their own secrets, their own miseries, and their own crises to deal with, as well as various difficulties in relating to each other.This, I think, is one of those books that had to grow on me, or at least one that I ended up liking more than I initially thought I was going to. For quite a while, as I was reading, my main thought (other than "as someone who lives in New Mexico, I cannot take the British idea of what constitutes a heatwave seriously") was that I had to give O'Farrell a lot of points for making the characters realistic and sympathetic despite the fact that I found none of them very likeable, but that I wasn't feeling quite as fully engaged with their lives as is generally necessary for this sort of of novel to be fully satisfying. And yet, by the end, I'd somehow come to care about these people, to feel a sort of family connection to them that completely transcends the question of whether I like them or not. So, it may not be a perfect novel -- there were a couple of moments where a narrative quirk threw me out of the story a for a moment, for instance -- but I do have to call it a successful one.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this story well enough but it didn't set my heart on fire.
    • 4/5
      Irish family losing father in heatwave and lots of family stuff
    • 4/5
      This is a lovely book about the disappearance of the elderly patriarch and the upheaval it causes for the estranged family members.
    • 3/5
      The Irish-ness of my ancestry loved the descriptions of Ireland in this book. The part of me that values family responded to the sadness of lies between family members that destroy their relationships. Too bad that only in fiction do these monstrous mistakes come out right.
    • 4/5
      Three grown siblings return home to help their mother when their father goes missing. The son fears he is losing his wife as she returns to education and forms her own friends. Aoife ties herself in knots hiding her dislexia, and the third child feels a stranger in her own marriage, disliked by her step-children. All confront their problems as they return to their childhood holiday-home in Ireland. Beautifully written with a cast of believable, if not likeable characters.
    • 3/5
      In Maggie O’Farrell’s suspenseful sixth novel, we are transported back to London in July 1976 during a heatwave. Irish immigrant and recent retiree Robert Riordan has disappeared while on a simple morning errand to buy a newspaper. His wife Gretta claims to have no idea where he has gone. The three Riordan children, Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife, despite their own personal issues and the baggage of long-standing sibling rivalries, answer their mother’s call and return home to help her cope, to try to get to the bottom of what has happened, and, as it turns out, to repair their broken relationships and exorcise ghosts from the past. With seven novels, a memoir, and several awards to her credit, O’Farrell knows the importance of endowing her characters with complex back-stories and rich emotional histories. Michael Francis, a teacher, is contending with the emotional disarray of a man who, having accepted that his failing marriage is his fault, discovers he is helpless to do anything about it. Monica, who has married a man much older than herself who has a family from a previous marriage, is finding the struggle to negotiate her way into the role of stepmother humbling and all-consuming. And trouble-child Aoife‘s life in New York, where she has gone to distance herself from her family’s criticisms and a chequered past, and where she works as a photographer’s assistant, is a constant struggle to function and support herself while masking a humiliating personal secret. Gretta has a disconcerting story of her own to tell, and, as the action proceeds, the entire Riordan clan make startling disclosures and painful admissions, about themselves and about their feelings for each other. Gretta, whom we begin to suspect early in the book knows more than she’s letting on, lets loose with a series of shocking revelations that result in a family road trip and the eventual unraveling of the mystery surrounding Robert’s disappearance. O’Farrell’s exploration of the complicated history of Robert and Gretta and their three children is by and large convincing, though at some point the reader might wonder how many secrets one family can reasonably conceal and still make a show that all is well. Robert himself, along with his motives, remains shadowy, and the heatwave motif wavers in and out of focus. But in the end Instructions for a Heatwave does succeed, and that success is due primarily to O’Farrell’s ability to engage our sympathies for all her characters. Those Riordans may be a messy, muddled, contrary lot with a habit of fudging the truth and nursing more than their fair share of grievances, but when we say goodbye to them, we do so with reluctance.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable, a gaze upon family relationships that was falloff sentiment without being cloyingly sentimental
    • 4/5
      Maggie O'Farrell's latest novel 'Instructions for a Heatwave' is an entertaining story set in London during the heatwave of 1976. In the first chapter we are introduced to Gretta Riordan, an Irish Catholic woman and mother of three grown-up children. One day her husband, Robert, a retired bank employee, goes out for his daily newspaper just as he does every morning, only today he doesn't return home. As the day wears on, Gretta becomes more worried and when she is told Robert has taken money and his passport, she realizes that her husband had no intention of returning home to her when he left their house that morning.

      The three children return home to support their mother and assist with the search. Michael Francis comes from across town, Monica comes up from London and Aoife flies home from New York where she has been living for the last eight years. All of the children are dealing with their own issues (marriage problems, long held grudges, and other tightly held secrets). Gretta is also nursing her own secrets. The siblings do not search the streets for their father, they search the house for clues. When they stumble across some scraps of paper they have no idea how much this will affect their past and give them more questions than answers.

      I thought the first half of the book was slow moving as we meet the characters and discover what their stories are. The book seems to speed up about fifty pages in and I started to feel that I was looking in on real people at their most vulnerable. The situations are heightened by the intensity of the heat that summer. I thought it was a funny and engaging story. The characters and the events kept me absorbed, and the author brought everything together at the end for a what I thought was a satisfying conclusion.
    • 4/5
      I just love Maggie O'Farrell's writing. The plot is nothing revolutionary (family gathers in midst of crisis, secrets are revealed), but the characters are so well-drawn. I loved the complicated relationships between the siblings. I wish I had a bit of a clearer picture of the father, and more resolution at the end. Other than that, a great read.
    • 4/5
      Summer, 1976 Robert Riordon tells his wife Gretta that hes going for a newspaper. He doesn't come back. Along come the three siblings, Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife to help find their dad.Firstly the story is set in 1976, when we had that heatwave thst went on and on. I was 7 years old and can vaguely remember it. The story really has nothing to do with the weather and the heatwave and could have been set against a heavy snowfall with freezing temperatures and still had been the same story.The book had some interesting characters in the three siblings. Each of them going through a crisis of their own as well as having a missing dad to deal with and the big family secret which is revealed. I didn't think thst I would enjoy this book but it turned out better than what I thought it would. I really enjoyed thd banter between the siblings and some of it was very dry, down yo earth and made me smile. The story I did think took a bit of a lull in places but quickly picked up again. There is the element of wanting to know whst was going to happen with each character and where Robert had got to.The ending is left to the readers to decide what will happen and this sometimes can be frustrating. I would say that this book is not for everyone but is a quirky read about a very dysfunctional family who the reader will eithet love or hate. Me personally am going to miss them
    • 5/5
      One morning, during the heatwave of 1976, Robert Riordan goes out for a paper - and doesn't come back.As his three children gather home with their mother, their heart-breaking stories are revealed. Monica, the favourite, who's life looks so good; Michael Francis, struggling with the life he has made; and Aoife, the "difficult one". But each returns and together put together the clues. Along the way, they learn more about their father and their mother, despite her best attempts.This is a fascinating and emotional story of how difficult lives can be, and the secrets and struggles some are living with.A great book.
    • 3/5
      *I won this in a giveaway*Instructions for a Heat Wave centers around lives of the Riordan family. The sudden and inexplicable disappearance of the family patriarch causes a convergence of the Riordan siblings which resurrects a slew of family grievances and secrets. We watch the family melt down in the midst of a literal heatwave sweeping through 1976 England. The book explores the complex and tense dynamics of a family and how assumptions can destroy relationships. This is the first novel I've read by Maggie O'Farrell and she is clearly a talented writer. However I felt the plot of this easily bordered on tedious at times and was underwhelmed by the ending. Overall, I would be interested to check out her other works. A solid 3.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      Atmospheric.Maggie O'Farrell is an excellent writer, and her latest novel is another hit. Set in the long, oppressively hot summer of 1976, the atmosphere of cloying heat was almost another character in the book.It was against this backdrop that elderly, forgetful Robert goes out to get his morning newspaper, as usual, but fails to return. His wife, Gretta, is devastated, she has no idea where he has gone, and calls her three children around her for support.This impromptu family reunion has stresses and hidden secrets of its own and forms the backbone of the book.Gretta's eldest son, known by both his names, as Michael Francis, teaches history, although he had higher aspirations as a student. His wife Claire has decided it is time she went back to university and has started studying history through the Open University. Monica is in her second marriage, with Peter, whose wife and children live close by, making her life uncomfortable. Aoife has to travel over to Ireland from The United States, her first trip back for several years. She leaves behind a fairly new relationship, one that she has great hopes for. Her childhood was riddled with problems caused by severe reading disabilities and she hides her inability to read behind an excellent memory. She works in a bar by night and as a photographer's assistant by day.I listened to this from Audible, expertly narrated by Dearbhla Molloy, whose Irish accent definitely added to my enjoyment. The complex characters and gradual unravelling of the tale kept me hooked as I carried my Kindle around the house. I remember that long hot summer, though as a child, it didn't seem quite so oppressive; it formed the perfect setting for Robert's mysterious disappearance and the family interactions that resulted.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this book, centred on complicated family relationships which are gradually revealed as the story develops. The basic plot is sufficiently intriguing, but it was the characters that kept me turning the page. I had to know why they behaved as they did, and what was in store for them. An author to seek out in future.
    • 2/5
      Light reading, unlikeable family during a UK drought
    • 2/5
      Instructions for a Heatwave was a slog for me. I read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by this author, and I liked it. I expected to like this one much more than I did. My impetus for plodding through the dreadfully dull paragraphs was to get to the ending which promised to be a revelation of a family secret. That seemed worth the effort. Sadly, it wasn't. A group of related people, none of them the least bit likable, plodding along in their miserable sad lives.Things do get sorted out, more or less by the time you reach the end of this story. I myself didn't the the revelation was worth the time. I found nothing here to recommend. Even a book that tells a sad story ought to have brightness in it somewhere. I found none here.
    • 4/5
      This is a story set in 1970s London, in a first-generation Irish family. I found it deeply authentic and personal, it even ends on my birthday. The story starts with the mysterious disappearance of the retired father. The author captures the family dynamic which seems so strong in Irish families - the dominant mother, the children born in London wanting to distance themselves and create a new life but somehow unable to escape their core Irishness. The book is very readable, I finished it in a couple of days, you get caught up with the characters and care very much about what happens to them. The book covers four days in 1976, it is packed with plot, sometimes seen from multiple perspectives. A page turner and a coming home for anyone with Irish parents who lived in London in the 70s. (Or perhaps anyone with an Irish family.)
    • 4/5
      There are a lot of ways in which this novel is a candidate for the 'Did Not Finish' pile - too slow, too many alternating points of view/flashbacks - but also a host of reasons to persevere, namely the characters. The story itself, set during the long, hot summer of 1976, wanders all over the place before finishing on a rather inconclusive note, but the Riordan family are so wonderfully fleshed out (if a little 'quirky') that I stayed for the company.'Mammy' Riordan, or Gretta, finds her life thrown into chaos one morning when recently retired husband Robert suddenly walks out of the house and disappears. Her three children, Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife (I really struggled with that name!), abandon their respective lives to come home and form a disunited front while searching for their father. Cue three extended chapters full of marital discord and buried secrets while slowing getting to the truth of where and why Robert has gone - if that is ever successfully established!I don't know, the narrative shouldn't work - and doesn't for a lot of people, judging by a lot of reviews - yet Maggie O'Farrell's writing is so layered and almost cluttered with detail and poignant observation that I found myself lost in the meandering story. Gretta reminds me of my grandmother in a lot of ways, both good and bad, and Aoife's (Ee-fa's) own longstanding struggle was so unexpected for the time and place of the novel that I kept wondering when she would be 'found out'. And I could almost feel the suffocating effects of the heatwave, even in coldest November!Recommended for those who read for the characters and the atmosphere, rather than the hectic pace of the plot!
    • 4/5
      Much happens during the three days in July of 1976 that this novel covers. Gretta's retired husband goes on an errand and doesn't come home. Their three grown children gather around her to provide some moral support and to try and figure out what happened to their father. Michael Francis and Monica live nearby in different sections of London, but the youngest daughter, Aoife (Ee-fah), is estranged from her family and lives with her boyfriend in New York City. This is as much a story about the relationships between the three siblings as it is about finding surprises in their family history while they search for the missing patriarch.This is the third book I've read by Maggie O'Farrell. She still writes about families in the British Isles and their tribulations. They don't always have neat endings but there is a sense that things will get better. In her latest book, she centers the plot around a heatwave that adds to the discomfort this family is feeling. While the pages turned, I got caught up in the various troubles and began to care for the characters. As an avid reader, I was particularly drawn into the story of Aoife's illiteracy that she managed to keep hidden from others. What a burden. I'm grateful for the ability to read and enjoy the subtle psychological character studies that O'Farrell does so well.
    • 4/5
      If you have never read an O'Farrell book before read 'The Hand That First Held Mine'.I read this on the back of that. O'Farrell is brilliant at contemporary characters, human interactions and beautiful prose.This book left too much hanging for me. I don't mind books that leave it the reader to conjecture, but I felt this let too much hanging, just needed to say a little bit more. The end was a little frustrating it built well to a great climax and then petered out a little... Saying that it is still a great novel.The heatwave of '76 seemed to be side thought as the book went on and might have been better to use the discomfort of the heat to exacerbate some of the tensions within the family? I loved the bit when the young daughter says to Aofie (the wilder younger of the three siblings) 'Don't worry no one told me either.' I will read more of O'Farrell... So should you especially if you are a man!
    • 4/5
      A copy of Instructions for a Heatwave was provided to me by Knopf. The story centers around 3 adult siblings and their mother as they join together in London after the father leaves for the newspaper one morning and does not return. Through present time, 1976, and past, we learn about the characters separately and the family dynamic between them. I really enjoyed the story and thought the characters were developed well. Although I am sure it was intended by the author to leave some questions at the end, I do wish there were some loose ends tied up before the story ended.
    • 4/5
      This book was a good read about a family struggling to come to terms with their father's disappearance and their own fraught relationships with each other. How they came to terms with their roles in their family and its impact on their current familial/significant other relationships was fully developed.
    • 3/5
      This is a book set during the heat wave of 1976 in England. Gretta's husband Robert goes out one day and does not return and Gretta's children all come together to deal with this and to try and find Robert. The children all have their issues. Monica the oldest and favourite one has step children issues, Michael Francis is in the middle of an unhappy marriage and the youngest Aoife has great difficultly with reading, a fact that none of the others in the family know anything about. The book was more about the relationships between the family members and their back stories, than the husband's disappearance. He does not feature as a character at all. We only learn of him and his life through other family members. The characters were interesting enough, but not memorable, and the ending to me was a bit sudden and a bit lame. It is not a book that made a great impression on me and not one I will remember long after I read it. I guess Aoife was the one I had the most sympathy for. I just wish she had been able to share her difficulties with all her family
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      If you have never read Maggie O'Farrell before you are missing an amazing experience. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox left me stunned. For days I went around in a daze.Her new book has just come out and it has the same gravitas, the same insightful and compelling look at family life - Instructions for a Heatwave. During the great heatwave of 1976 Gretta Riordan, an Irish housewife living in London, says goodbye to her newly retired husband as he goes down to the corner to get a paper. He doesn't come back. And it seems his passport and their joint bank account went with him.She calls her three children to come home, each one of whom is having a somewhat major crisis of their own. Trying to tease out clues to his whereabouts they end up back in Ireland discovering truths not only about daddy and mammy but about themselves. Every once in a while you find yourself in the hands of a truly gifted writer that totally transports you into their world and Maggie O'Farrell is one of the most gifted.
    • 4/5
      Recently I heard Kate Atkinson speak at a writer's festival. I am an only child, as is she, and she said something that struck a chord with me. She talked about how she is fascinated by families and the dynamics between siblings. It seems to her that families are a safe place where you can behave worse than you would in any other facet of your life and somehow it is permissible and you will (eventually) be forgiven. When the sibling dynamic is something that you yourself have not experienced, it is endlessly puzzling and fascinating.I don't know if Maggie O'Farrell is an only child (her biography does not disclose this information), but one of the things that I love about her as a writer is the way she explores families and the complicated relationship between siblings (look no further than The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. This is another book about family dynamics, with the plot playing almost a secondary role to the relationships between the siblings and their parents.It's set in England in 1976. Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going out to buy a newspaper and doesn't come back. The three children return home to support their mother and assist with the search. Michael Francis comes from across town, Monica comes up from London and Aoife (pronounced EE-fah) flies home from New York where she has been living for 8 years. All of the children are dealing with their own issues: marriage problems, long held grudges, tightly held secrets. And Gretta is also nursing her own secrets. Maggie O'Farrell is such a wonderful writer and the characters really come to life.In the afterword, the author explains that she used the setting of the 1976 heatwave because she thinks that aberrant weather brings out erratic behaviour. I am not sure whether this was entirely effective although there is a heightened sense of unreality in Gretta's responses to the situation and maybe the weather was a factor in this. O'Farrell also has a slightly irritating habit of not entirely wrapping her endings up. The reader is left to intuit or guess exactly how things panned out. I didn't particularly mind this, but I can see that some people might find that irritating.I loved this book. I got wrapped up in the characters and I felt that I got to know them all.
    • 2/5
      A copy of Instructions for a Heatwave was provided to me by Knopf for review purposes.'Odd that your life can contain such significant tripwires to your future and, even while you wander through them, you have no idea.'The story itself starts off at a slow and leisurely pace that doesn't ever quite pick up speed but the writing itself was quite gripping. The characters are also very drab and almost boring but they're written so well that they somehow manage to be intriguing nonetheless. The three grown-up children (of the missing father) are the center of the story despite the fact that it was their father that went missing, their father that was initially the reason for this story. Him going missing was simply the catalyst to bringing these three children back together after many years of separation.As the story progressed I became less and less interested in why their father disappeared and even with the odd assortment of drama every character managed to possess. The ongoing family drama seemed more stereotypical than interesting and while the characters themselves may have been intriguing at first That certainly didn't last. You know those characters in stories that make idiotic choices or choose to withhold some vital information and you can't help but scream, "Just TELL SOMEONE" yet they don't and it just produces more drama and continues to cause problems? Well, that happened. And it was ridiculous and failed to garner any sympathy from me. Also, the ending was completely preposterous and was actually quite laughable. Hint: Your questions will likely not be answered. Simply put, this "sweeping family drama" only managed to be mediocre due to the lackluster cast of characters and their completely avoidable drama. Yet another highly anticipated summer read that failed to meet any of my expectations.
    • 5/5
      I have been a fan of Maggie O'Farrell since After You'd Gone. Her last novel, The Hand That First Held Mine, was not one I'd enjoyed as mush as I hoped. So I was very relieved that I loved Instructions For a Heatwave!Gretta Riordan is preparing for her morning as she always does, when her newly retired husband, Robert, goes for the morning papers but doesn't return home. Gretta calls her children, Michael Francis, who is living with a distant wife and regretting his life choices, Monica, married to a man who's children loathe her is dealing with the death of the children's beloved cat, and Aoife, the youngest daughter who moved to NYC to escape a secret and being pushed away by Monica. They all gather together to support their mom and figure out where their father can be. O'Farrell as usual is able to seamlessly move within the past and present to tell us the stories of this family. While the story itself isn't that special, it is just the way it is told that makes this such a good read. Aoife was my favorite and I think the most interesting character. I could have read a book that was about her alone, but I suppose it was the interactions of the family that make this a really good novel. Even if you are reading O'Farrell for the first time, you will realize that you are meeting a great writer. For those of you that have already discovered her work, I do not think you will be disappointed. Highly recommended.