About this ebook
It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained in months. Gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe and Robert Riordan tells his wife, Gretta, that he is going around the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t return.
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 has gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share. A journey back to Connemara, Ireland, brings surprises, insights and revelations, as each confronts the knotty tangle of family life and love.
Elegant and compelling, Instructions for a Heatwave secures Maggie O’Farrell’s position as one of the best of the new generation of British writers.
About the author
MAGGIE O’FARRELL was born in Northern Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She is the author of six novels, including After You’d Gone (winner of the Betty Trask Award), The Distance Between Us (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award). She lives in Edinburgh. WEB: MAGGIEOFARRELL.COM