Description

A story of a dysfunctional but deeply loveable family reunited, set during the legendary summer of 1976, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE by Maggie O’Farrell was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award and was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller (2013).

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 newspaper. He doesn’t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.

Publisher Review

A quite wonderful novel...at once enthralling, page turning and atmospheric * Irish Examiner * O'Farrell's language is lissom, airborne, mostly seamless, her characters flawed, contradictory, aggravating and instantly knowable. This is a deceptively easy, effortlessly true-feeling novel; a total delight * Metro * An author at the top of her game * Sunday Express * Masterful...holds you on an exquisite knife-edge * Marie Claire * Instantly appealing...magical * Daily Telegraph * Unputdownable -- Joanna Briscoe, Guardian My favourite kind of novel: big-hearted, psychologically complex and utterly gripping -- Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette The Riordans will stay in your mind long after you finish this book. They're funny, infuriating and impossible not to love. They feel like family * Irish Times *