Thoughts soon.

4 🥵🥵🥵🥵Multiple heatwaves happening here, including a real one that struck Britain in July of 1976, like the one going on here in California in July, 2021 . . . and beyond sadly.It's getting to me. I'm cranky, my flowers are thirsty due to drought, I have to wake at dawn to get anything accomplished before succumbing to cabin fever the rest of the day or heading to the coast. But it's great for cozy reading in front of the air conditioner. Maggie O'Farrell could write the minutes for our communit...

4.5 stars It’s a commonly told story, both in fiction and in real life: a crisis in the family brings siblings back to their childhood home and back to the memories of the past. It’s usually a struggle to sort things out as secrets and resentments unfold. However, there is nothing common about how Maggie O’Farrell draws you into the lives of her characters in this drama of the Riordan family. The air is stifling and not just because of the heat wave that London is experiencing in 1976. Gretta is...

4.5 starsRobert Riordan, a retired bank manager, walks away from his London home early one morning in the middle of a rare (but true!) heatwave in the summer of 1976. By the end of the day, his eccentric and chatty wife Gretta finally admits he hasn't just gone out for a walk and reluctantly reaches out to her three adult children, Michael Francis, Monica, and Aoife to alert them their dad's missing. So begins this family drama that explores the ties that bind and those that unravel in families

A quiet, solemn novel that sifts through the whys and the wherefores of a father who steps out to buy his morning newspaper and does not return home.  As it slowly soaks in that he is really gone, the mother summons their adult children home.  Ah, the dreaded family conference.  It's odd, too, because Father has always been the dependable one, with Mother being the more mercurial parent.  Meanwhile, the siblings are all dealing with significant problems of their own, and the timing of this famil...

I liked this book about a family and their secrets during the British heatwave of 1976, but I found it heavy and slow. Although it was published in 2013—just three years before the last O’Farrell novel I read, This Must Be the Place, and five years before the magnificent I Am, I Am, I Am which introduced me to O’Farrell—this felt like early work whose style is not yet refined. For my taste, there was just too much of it: too many words; too many serial lists of nouns, adjectives, references; too...

Hard for those of us who live in Australia, are used to extreme heart and who have seen droughts go on for years, to imagine England in the middle of a heatwave and drought. But that is the scene in 1976 and it it’s based on real events. Into that too real situation in London recently retired Robert Riordan, formally of Ireland, tells his wife Gretta he is going to buy a paper. When he does not come back Gretta calls together their adult children consisting of Michael Francis, and Monica and Aoi...

[4+] Maggie O'Farrell's exquisite writing held me captive in this novel about a family in search for their father. She is so skillful at exposing the essence of family dynamics. The three adult children have a complex history with each other - each of them is flawed and at times difficult. Yet, I loved spending time with all of them. I was especially intrigued by Aoife.

This novel is set during the heatwave of 1976, which I remember very well. Oddly enough, I read the book during recent hot weather, and it made the heat feel even more tangible. The novel centres around the Riordan family. Gretta is the matriarch and, whatever the weather, she bakes soda bread three times a week. Her day starts as normal - she bakes and husband Robert leaves at his usual time to buy a newspapr. He doesn't return...Robert's disappearance leads to Gretta's grown children rallying

4.5★First. Before anything else. Thank you Maggie O’Farrell for this (and you’re welcome, anyone else like me who has never got this right either):“‘Mum,’ Aoife says again. ‘It’s me.’‘Aoife?’It strikes Aoife in that moment that her mother is the only one who can properly pronounce her name. The only person in whose mouth it sounds as it should. Her accent—still unmistakably Galway, after all these years—strikes the first syllable with a sound that is halfway between E and A, and the second with...

This book dithers like an elderly woman pondering what flavor of Cesar dog food to feed to her spoiled schnauzer. It dithers like my last rambling sentence.The main reason I finished reading the novel was to see if anything mind-blowing actually happened. Hell, I would have settled for nose-blowing or blink-inducing. To me, the huge secret that matriarch Gretta Riordan held back from her children had the strength of a butterfly burp. Perhaps its a culture thing and I'm out of the loop. But to me...

Why have I not read Maggie O'Farrell before?!I don't know, 'cause she's gooooood. Like, sit in the bathtub until you're a prune good. Miss your stop on the train good. Refuse to split the driving time on a weekend road trip good. I may or may not have done all of these things while reading this book. In all honesty, this is a pretty standard Family in Crisis novel. The basic plot is a rather familiar one: husband leaves one day and doesn't come home, mother requests the presence of her far-flung...

The long hot summer of 1976 has become legendary in the UK. This may cause a degree of eye rolling to some goodreads friends from warmer climes, as what it amounted to was three or four months of nice sunny weather, above average temperatures and very little rain ....... but to us, this had historical significancel! In all fairness some rivers and reservoirs ran dry, and there was water rationing for a while with standpipes in some areas.This is the backdrop to Instructions For A Heatwave, Maggi...

My rating: 2 of 5 starsA 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 intriguin...

A father uncharacteristically disappears. The family gathers to figure out what happened, find him, and draw support from each other.But...years of alliances, secrets, and estrangement tag along with those good intentions, infiltrating the interactions, scrambling the forward momentum. Ah, the messiness of family and family history. No one does it better than O'Farrell. Coming from a large family, these imperfect people resonated with me. The misunderstandings, assumptions, ineffective communica...

A solid, gripping family saga. A thoroughly enjoyable read. One of those books that makes living a joy. Packed with back story and intrigue. THE BLURBThe stunning new novel from Costa Award winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976. It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a...

3.5 stars, rounded upThis is yet another book that is well-written and has all the ingredients for a great read but fell a little short. I enjoy novels featuring family dramas, dysfunctional families and complicated sibling relationships. This book has all that in spades.When their father, Robert, disappears, the adult Riordan children gather in their hometown, and with Gretta, their mother, try to piece together the clues and find him. Along the way, long-held family secrets are revealed, and m...

I absolutely loved The Hand That First Held Mine when I read it a couple of years ago. The weaving of stories, the secrets and slow revelations were all so beautifully done. It is a compelling read. So, I absolutely jumped at the chance of a review copy of the new novel from the lovely folk at Tinder Press. I didn't read it straight away, but once I saw all the amazing comments from people that had, I knew it was time to dive in. I read it, and enjoyed it, but didn't immediately connect with it

3.5 stars Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O Farrell is a very enjoyable and entertaining novel and I was really excited to read this book having loved The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.The story is set in London in July 1976. It hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estrange