Reading the 20th Century discussion
This topic is about
Instructions for a Heatwave
Group reads
>
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell (October 2018)
Mod
Mod
I had, had this books for quite a few years but had never got around to it, so was pleased Judy choose it. Maybe from the hype at the time , I expected more from it, but to me it read like one of the soaps. I remember well the heatwave and the continuous news programmes showing the standpipes, although it didn't affect my part of London, but mostly seemed to be in the north of the country.
I didn't notice that the heatwave had much to do with this.
Mod
Susan wrote: "I thought the weather was commented on fairly constantly, to be honest. "Yes. I don't know about where you live, but here the weather is mentioned daily, if not more frequently. But I didn't see that it had anything to do with the story. If the heatwave had been what caused tensions, I could understand the setting. But it wasn't, and I felt this could have been set in any weather or season in any year. There were parts of the ending that might have made winter difficult, or rain, I can agree.
EDIT: And just because I have this quibble with the time/setting, does in no way detract from what I appreciated about the story, and will push up another O'Farrell I've left sitting, neglected.
Mod
Susan wrote: "Yes, I see what you mean. The story was certainly not dependent on the weather, but, for anyone in England, I suppose setting it then really placed it in a particular time and era."I can't remember if it was 1976 or 1977 when the big heatwave hit California. I know it was about that time because I moved here in 1977 and I was living there at the time. There was water rationing and many restaurants charged you $1 for a glass of water (pretty outrageous then). There was a big brouhaha because there were no water meters in Sacramento, the state capital, so legislators weren't affected much by the rationing.
While we haven't had what you would call a heat wave here, this past summer has been very dry, and I think September in particular the driest on record. Our electricity is supplied by hydro power from surrounding lakes. The lakes are so low, that next month our electricity will be supplied by diesel generators, and for that we will pay extra. This, just to say I know about heatwaves and drought.
Mod
In the novel there hadn't been any rain for months, and I know you in England are not used to that. I was surprised that O'Farrell didn't try to use the heatwave and drought having an affect on the various relationships, especially that of Michael Francis and Claire. (Was that her name? I'm terrible at remembering character names.)
Mod
The heatwave was there in the background, although I agree that O'Farrell could have made more use of it.The problem with fixing the date so firmly in 1976 was that I can't help doing mental arithmetic and the history of the Riordan brothers does not work. I notice that another reviewer had a problem with this as well.
Mod
Mod
Maggie O'Farrell's debut is 99p today. Quite a few 99p kindle books today, in fact, so take a look at titles in the kindle offers thread, if you are interested.
Mod
Mod
Maggie O'Farrell was an answer to a question on University Challenge last night, and I do remember the heatwave of '76. It even reached Manchester.This is not a book I'd generally go for, but the last six months has contained a lot of issues in my personal life which has brought about some truths about those close to me. Nothing to write a book about but nonetheless it has brought an understanding of others as well as myself. Oh for the better I should add, although for some the truth maybe worse than living a lie.
Mod
I have yet to read it, but it's fair to say that I've warmed to the idea of novels of this type and this maybe a good place to start. But that the whole point of of forums like this is to widen one's reading.
I am nearly half way through, and find the characters - the Riordans - peculiarly unappealing, whiny and selfish. That includes Mam, the three children and the two grandchildren. I too remember the heatwave, with the hosepipe upstairs to syphon the bath water down to the garden, although I'm not sure that we ever bothered. The trains were very hot, and working in London wasn't pleasant, although the dress code at work was a lot more relaxed, for men and women, than it had been in the 60s.
Mod
We never had a garden at the time of the heatwave, living in a flat, but I do remember standpipes, when things got really bad.
Mod
I also loved her writing and found the characters well-drawn and believable, though like Rosina, I didn't like some of them.O'Farrell is becoming one of my favourite authors. I loved The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox in particular.
I found Monica insufferable. I had great sympathy for Aoife, though I was almost finished before I understood how her name was pronounced.
Mod
I felt sorry for Monica. She seemed to spend her whole life trying to do the right thing - whether caring for her mother, her sister or trying to make her marriage work. The moment when Jenny entered the kitchen and you felt the very house she lived in didn't belong to her was really well written. You felt felt her mortification, with Jessica and Florence, as well.
It was Michael Francis who really angered me. In a surge of anti-English anger he gets Claire pregnant (presumably breaking an understanding that they will always use a condom), making her give up on her own career prospects, and then, when she starts to study again, denigrating her choices and suggesting that if she wants to know anything, he will tell her all about the Industrial Revolution (so why study? Just ask a man!).
Rosina wrote: "It was Michael Francis who really angered me. In a surge of anti-English anger he gets Claire pregnant (presumably breaking an understanding that they will always use a condom), making her give up ..."He didn't give up his own career prospects? This is really unfair.
He did give up his own career prospects as well, and took a job he does not enjoy, which he resents. It is still unfair on Claire though.There were times when I felt sorry for pretty much all the characters, but there were also times when I felt annoyed with them. Perhaps that makes them realistic.
Val wrote: "He did give up his own career prospects as well, and took a job he does not enjoy, which he resents. It is still unfair on Claire though."This was 1976. Although this was a time of transition, generally speaking, women stayed home and took care of the kids. And did she discuss with him going back to school now that the children were a little older? Apparently not. It looked as if she decided that marriage is not a partnership.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Rosina wrote: "It was Michael Francis who really angered me. In a surge of anti-English anger he gets Claire pregnant (presumably breaking an understanding that they will always use a condom), maki..."Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Val wrote: "He did give up his own career prospects as well, and took a job he does not enjoy, which he resents. It is still unfair on Claire though."
This was 1976. Although this was a time of tr..."
She was a bit old to go back to school - she started to study with the OU, a distance learning system recently introduced, that enabled people in full-time jobs, or housewives, to study to degree level. Given how dismissive we see Michael Francis being at her decision to study with the OU, I'm not sure whether her discussing her needs with him would have produced any more sympathetic response than 'Ask me about history. I have a degree, why do you need one?'
Michael Francis had to give up his career prospects because of his own decision to have sex out of anger without a condom. So it was, in essence, his own fault. Claire lost all career prospects, and was condemned to a domestic life as mother, with a husband who thinks only of his own disappointments and who cheats with a colleague. I think it's entirely fair to expect him to be more understanding of his wife's need of mental stimulation and a more intellectual circle of acquaintances.
Well, we'll just have to disagree. I was a single parent with children in 1976. I went back to school. Claire was the least likable/sympathetic character for me after Monica.
I'll add that I have no idea what OU is. Education is different in the US.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Well, we'll just have to disagree. I was a single parent with children in 1976. I went back to school. Claire was the least likable/sympathetic character for me after Monica."If you were a single mother you presumably didn't have a husband telling you that you would only end up with a rubbish degree, and anyway, he could tell you anything you needed to know, so not to bother with studies. It isn't Claire's decision to resume her education that is the problem - it's the lack of support from her husband, the one who forced her to drop out in the first place.
But then my experience as someone of the same age as Claire, who also got a degree with the OU, is of having a totally supportive husband. Who was/is Irish.
No, I didn't have a husband who ever had nor ever would have any kind of degree. I still don't have one. And, frankly, I don't think my life hasn't been diminished by the lack thereof. Look, she didn't discuss it with him before hand and I think she should have. I think with a reasonable conversation, not just yelling and pushing, he would have come around. She was angry, and that will get you nowhere. I didn't like her and I thought she neglected the children.
I didn't really like any of these characters but, like Val, I did find them very realistic and relatable and think this is one of O'Farrell's talents as an author: to create well-rounded, flawed characters who hold the reader's interest even while being somewhat unlikable. OU =Open University, Elizabeth.
The skittery chronology and the limited information we have about the interaction between characters means that we don't know if Claire had expressed a desire to return to studies before beginning her OU course. As I said, her husband's dismissive patronising response to the news that she was writing an essay suggests a total lack of interest or support. Particularly if she enrolled after learning that he's been sleeping with a colleague on a school trip.
Rosina, I think you've just explained why I like O'Farrell so much as an author--it's her use of skittery chronology and limited information which so closely mirrors real life. We meet people and almost immediately begin to judge them even though our understanding of their life story is skittery and limited. If we're lucky enough to learn more about them, we start to piece together our understanding of their life story and this might change how we view them (even though in some cases it may not mean we like them any better.)
For each of the characters in this book, we had to piece things together and come to our own understanding of why they are the way they are.
Storyheart wrote: "OU =Open University, Elizabeth."I understood that, but Open University does not have any context for me.
I might also mention that the lack of Michael Francis using a condom doesn't sway my opinion of these two. As far as I can tell, they had been having sex for some time. Why was it Michael Francis's responsibility for prevention? Did Claire have no responsibility in the matter? As you say, she had her own life to look out for, and you don't seem to want a man taking all of the responsibility.
No, I didn't have a husband who ever had nor ever would have any kind of degree. I still don't have one. And, frankly, I don't think my life hasn't been diminished by the lack thereof. Pardon me, if I was ambiguous. I have a husband and I don't have a degree.
Val wrote: "By the 1970s there were more women in employment than not.https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandl..."
That graph shows the division between working/non-working women was very close in the 1970s.
I can only reflect on what I knew at the time. I worked. I didn't have any choice. Many women in the US were working by choice, some who were delaying marriage, others by economic necessity because of the then rampant inflation. But there was also a lot of discussion by both men and women, that such should not be the case. An "ain't it awful" type of conversation, and many - not just a few, but many, both men and women - voiced the concern about who would care for the children.
It was 57% in 1975, so yes it was close.Only some employers gave maternity leave back then, so a lot of women had to leave their jobs when they were pregnant and look for a new one when they returned to the workplace. Local authorities usually did include maternity leave, which is perhaps why quite so many of my contemporaries became teachers.
I don't think the US had much in the way of maternity leave in '76. I think it came about (begrudgingly) a few years later. One of the first questions to be asked when going for a job was whether you were going to get pregnant and want to leave shortly after being hired.I haven't read the book. But I'm with Elizabeth - I don't know what Open University means.
I went back to school in the mid-'70s as an "older" student - mid-20s. I did get a degree.
The Open University provided modular degrees using distance learning, via study materials by post and television broadcasts (they were usually quite late in the evening, so people could watch them after work and when children were asleep). It is still going, but is now computer based.The courses are good quality, not like some correspondence courses, but it took a few years before employers accepted OU degrees on the same basis as full-time university ones.
Mod
I don't think many universities here took mature students up to that point, so the OU really did open doors, and its foundation courses enabled people who had not achieved the right exam passes at school to get a second chance.
http://www.open.ac.uk/researchproject...
I remember my mother doing some modules with the OU in the 70s before she went on to train as a teacher.
Mod
Val wrote: "The Open University provided modular degrees using distance learning, via study materials by post and television broadcasts (they were usually quite late in the evening, so people could watch them ..."I don't think that O'Farrell necessarily has the OU set up right. Claire would have started off with the Foundation Arts course (literature, visual art, philosophy, history ...) before choosing a module, which might indeed be history, but not 'a history degree'. And she does seem to devote rather too much time to it - most people managed to do one or two modules a year while also working full time. It shouldn't involve the total lack of cooking, caring for the children, that so annoys Michael Francis.
But on the other hand, she is also taking advantage of the widening of her social circle, from mothers with finger painting to people interested in learning and history. And that too makes him uncomfortable.
Susan wrote: "What did everyone think of Aoife's 'secret,' and the way she coped with it?"This brought tears to my eyes.
She cannot read. This is her own private truth. Because of it, she must lead a double life: the fact of it saturates every molecule of her being, defines her to herself, always and forever, but nobody else knows. Not her friends, not her colleagues, not her family — certainly not her family. She has kept it from all of them, felt herself brimming with the secret her whole life.There was a time or two in my working life when a man gave me his checkbook to fill out the check to pay his bill. People who can neither read or write do employ the methods Aoife is described as using. When young, she covered one eye and this made me think she had amblyopia and I wondered why no one noticed enough to do anything. But then I think she was also dyslexic. I haven't taken the time to read what happens to people who have both conditions. Even now, I think it would take an extraordinary teacher who could lead Aoife to read, but maybe there has been more progress than I know. I should ask my niece, who is a reading specialist.
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
Instructions for a Heatwave (other topics)My Lover's Lover (other topics)
Rebecca (other topics)
This Must Be the Place (other topics)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (other topics)
More...
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.
In a story that stretches from the Upper West Side to a village on the coast of Ireland, Maggie O’Farrell explores the mysteries that inhere within families, and reveals the fault lines over which we build our lives. Instructions for a Heatwave weaves an unforgettable narrative of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.