O’Farrell’s award-winning 2020 novel, Hamnet, introduced me to her writing and I look forward to reading her earlier books. Instructions for a heatwave was published in 2013 and set in London during the historic heatwave that gripped Britain in 1976. During our current long, hot, often smoky summer, it seemed the obvious place to begin. Although living for decades in Britain, the Riordan family is still deeply Irish Catholic. One July morning, Gretta wakes up to find her husband of forty years, Robert, gone. Really gone, and the bank account cleaned out as well. In a panic, she calls her son, Michael Francis, and daughter, Monica. A third daughter, Aoife, who left the family several years back after a quarrel, is living in Manhattan. In their search for the missing man, family secrets will come to light. Michael Francis’s marriage to Claire is in difficulties, while Monica’s first marriage has failed and her second is rocky because of her stepdaughters’ dislike of her. Aoife has recently become involved with an American who is dodging the Vietnam draft. She has her own secret – she cannot read and has spent her entire life concealing it, an exhausting battle. Robert, nee Ronan, has been concealing something even more surprising since before his marriage. Just as Hamnet centered on a fictional reimaging of the marriage between Shakespeare and Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, this earlier novel’s theme is marriage and its complexities. Recommended. 290 pp.
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