Instructions for a Heatwave

How does Maggie O'Farrell do it? How can she take a dozen characters and open up to the reader each one's worries, dreams and desires, in such an intimate and fulfilling way? This is her unfailing talent, that she can create such emotional richness, and such a joyfully satisfying read.

One morning, a man who's newly-retired goes out to buy a newspaper and doesn't come home. His wife has no idea where he might have gone, or why. His children return to the family home to piece together the mystery of why this quiet man might have vanished without any word. Monica, the middle child, discovers he's been paying money every month to 'Assumpta', and this sets the whole family on a journey.

On the way, Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife learn more about their Irish origins, and discover their mother may know more about what has happened than she's prepared to say. And they make their own inner journeys to find a resolution to their own issues.

It's a storyline that ranges from Manhattan to the English countryside and from London to Galway, set against the oppressive heat wave that baked England in summer 1976. This, Maggie O'Farrell's sixth book, absorbs the reader with its sensory intensity, and shows her at the peak of her story weaving powers.