Instructions For A Heatwave

Instructions For A Heatwave finds her at the top of her game, with a novel about a family crisis set during the legendary British heatwave of 1976.  Gretta Riordan wakes on a stultifying July morning to find that her husband of forty years has gone to get the paper and vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Gretta's three grown children converge on their parents' home for the first time in years: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her and a blighted past that has driven away the younger sister she once adored; and Aoife, the youngest, now living in Manhattan, a smart, immensely resourceful young woman who has arranged her entire life to conceal a devastating secret.
Maggie O'Farrell writes with exceptional grace and sensitivity about marriage, the mysteries that are inhered within families, and the fault lines over which we build our lives — the secrets we hide from the people who know and love us best. O'Farrell paints a bracing portrait of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.