Book Group: March bonus book - Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

6 watchers

LindsD Mar 2015 9:26am, 23 Mar 2015 4,517 posts	0 LindsD Yes, I remember 76 too, and the ladybirds (didn't the aphids come the following year or something?). I 'll ask OH about the mass thing, Columba.
Columba Mar 2015 1:21pm, 23 Mar 2015 6,297 posts	0 Columba Thank you McGoohan, an amorphous solid, I'll remember that. Perhaps. I don't remember aphids or ladybirds in '76. I remember ladybirds at some later date, must have been early '90s; I was at the seaside (west coast of Wales) with Youngest, and a friend, and her youngest, and there were ladybirds everywhere, you couldn't walk without treading on them, and they were floating up and down like red foam on the surface of the waves.
McGoohan Mar 2015 7:00am, 26 Mar 2015 15,228 posts	0 McGoohan Instructions for a Heatwave At first I thought I wouldn’t like this – conflicting siblings brought together at a time of family crisis didn’t seem anything new. Then I warmed to it a bit as there was some good observational stuff on the nature of the relationship between parents and children. But then it lost me again. There’s a bit of a comic slant to the comparison between ‘The Irish Family’ and ‘The English Family’. She criticises both ways of life but I always felt there was an undercurrent of ‘yes, these people are all flawed, but isn’t the Irish way best?’ I think the big problem for me was in the extended cast of supporting characters. Monica’s husband, his children and ex-wife and pantomime villains. Claire starts off as seeming completely evil until Michael Francis’s affair is revealed. But even then he’s portrayed almost as the victim in that. By that stage there seemed to be a hierarchy of character: Irish Women – essentially good though flawed; followed by Irish Men – ditto plus affair English Women – harpies English Men – all bastards I don’t know if it says anywhere if he’s Irish American but I did notice that Aoife’s man, Gabe, has an Irish name and is therefore, by the standards of the book, To Be Trusted. I found the last third of the book a struggle to get through, thinking ‘don’t go to Ireland, don’t go to Ireland’. Then they went en masse to Ireland which was – I felt – written through a sort of rose-tinted nostalgia. I felt I was being bludgeoned by Irishness now. England as a place of conflict, Ireland as a place of calm resolution. The final straw was the lack of resolution. The father is a big unexplained gap in the centre of the book and he remains largely unexplained at the end. This was not a book I would ordinarily have chosen from a bookshop or the library so it was really interesting to read something different – thanks Linds for that, but I can’t say I’ll be rushing to read another O’Farrell.
McGoohan Mar 2015 7:04am, 26 Mar 2015 15,229 posts	0 McGoohan Oh, I scored it a 5. I think by current count the book has 27 votes. 19 of them (19!) are for the 'I don't read' option Linds put in there for the OCD people who have to vote in every poll. Rolls eyes It's good that we have that choice because otherwise 5 would have had 19 votes out of 27 and I would have been torn between 4(too low) and 6(too high) but feeling unable to vote 5 because that's what the eejits are doing.
LazyDaisy Mar 2015 7:19am, 26 Mar 2015 10,289 posts	0 LazyDaisy pops in even though not part of the book group I read this last year and my feelings are almost precisely what McG has posted ^^^ up there. I felt the ending was more of a 'petering out', and I was quite irritated by the 'Ireland wonderful, England horrible' message. Perhaps as I have no Irish blood in me and have never been to Ireland, I'm missing out on a fundamental truth, but it seemed very heavy-handed. I can't provide any quotes to back up my comments because the book went to the Red Cross bookshop - a sure sign that I didn't like it enough to keep or pass on to friends. pops out again
Little Nemo - this kitten can Mar 2015 1:00pm, 31 Mar 2015 5,168 posts	0 Little Nemo - this kitten can Finished this last night and I'm a bit torn. I loved Maggie O'Farrell's first book (After You'd Gone) but I've found her subsequent books a bit of a let-down compared to it. So while I love her writing and there are passages in the book that are brilliant they'll be something later that jars me out of enjoying it. It was an easy book to read but I did find myself getting annoyed with parts of it. I found Gretta to be intensely irritating and quite hypocritical in her treatment of Monica. I guess I'm 3rd generation Irish but not from a Catholic background so I can't say I really recognised any of the characters. I also didn't pick up on the Ireland good, England bad as some of the other readers have. The aspect that I found the weakest was the sense of time. Apart from the odd thing (wrapping the spiral telephone cord round your fingers, or kids crammed into the car on top of luggage) it just didn't feel like 1976 to me. Admittedly I was only 9 at the time so maybe I don't remember it that well but I got no sense of the heat and dryness of that summer. I also had to keep reminding myself of when it was set to explain why Aoife's dyslexia was undiagnosed and why being unmarried was so very bad. I did like the ending though, the suggestion that at least people were talking about their problems so they might get resolved. And I liked that the father was an almost complete absence and that there wasn't a whole section tacked on where he explained himself. I gave this book a 6.
Oysterboy Apr 2015 10:10pm, 4 Apr 2015 10,415 posts	0 Oysterboy I thought it was ok. I found it quite lacking in plot and got a bit bored but the characterisation was quite good. I would have liked things to have been tied up a bit more at the end.
CStar Apr 2015 9:23pm, 17 Apr 2015 4,473 posts	0 CStar Much to my surprise I really enjoyed this. Read it on two long flights. Not my normal type of book, so really nice to find something unusual.
Serendippily May 2017 6:05pm, 10 May 2017 1,770 posts	0 Serendippily I loved the hand that once held mine and my lovers lover. Didn't like this one so much!
LindsD May 2017 10:57pm, 10 May 2017 17,009 posts	0 LindsD Blimey Seren. This thread is over a year old!