Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

From the award-winning author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait: a sweeping family drama where a father’s disappearance forces three adult siblings to come together and confront what they really know about their past.

London, 1976. In the thick of a record-breaking heatwave, Gretta Riordan’s newly-retired husband has cleaned out his bank account and vanished. Now, for the first time in years, the three Riordan children are converging on their childhood home: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her and an ugly secret that has driven a wedge between her and the little sister she once adored; and Aoife (pronounced EE-fah), the youngest, whose new life in Manhattan is elaborately arranged to conceal her illiteracy. As the siblings track down clues to their father’s disappearance, they also navigate rocky pasts and long-held secrets. Their search ultimately brings them to their ancestral village in Ireland, where the truth of their family’s past is revealed.

Wise, lyrical, instantly engrossing, Instructions for a Heatwave is a richly satisfying page-turner from a writer of exceptional intelligence and grace.

MAGGIE O’FARRELL was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction), The Marriage Portrait, After You’d Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), 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.

Author Residence: Edinburgh, Scotland

Author Hometown: Northern Ireland

Aug 15, 2023