Come and chat to MAGGIE O'FARRELL about Instructions For a Heatwave (and all her previous books), Weds 23rd Oct, 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

If youre still loath to let go of summer, our October Book of the Month keeps the temperature high. Maggie OFarrells bestseller, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, is set in London, July 1976. The Riordans are an Irish couple with three grown-up children, and as they sit sweltering in their kitchen, 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 the 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.

As always, O'Farrell captures daily life with acute observation and empathy while sustaining a gradual suspense that reveals secret histories. Another entrancing and beautifully paced novel from a truly excellent storyteller.

To find out more, go to our book of the month page, where you can also find links to video interviews, Maggie's website and to her previous Mumsnet Bookclub chat back in 2011.

Tinder Press have 50 copies to give to Mumsnetters to claim yours please go to the book of the month page. We'll post on the thread when all the copies have gone.

If you're not lucky enough to bag one of the free books, you can always get your paperback or Kindle version here.

We are thrilled that Maggie will be joining us and answering questions about INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, her writing career and her previous novels on Wednesday 23 October, 9-10pm. So please feel free to discuss the book here throughout the month, pop up any advance questions and we will see you all here, Wed 23 October.

Can you tell me how and when you find the time to write with a sickly 4 year old and a teething baby? I'm trying to finish my first (possibly last) novel at the moment and the only time I have free is when the sickly 6 year old (seriously germs, you've had a warm welcome now bugger off) and teething 2yr old are in bed and somehow after a whole day of child wrangling, the lure of a piece of shortbread and an earl grey is much stronger than the typewriter. Really, to write well I need utter solitude. Please tell me that farming the 2yr old off to grandparents/preschool for an afternoon or two is perfectly legitimate when I plan to spend my time writing instead of tackling the laundry. If you say it's true I can tell my husband/parents/guilty conscience it's fine because Maggie said so.

You really are one of my favourite writers (I think I was all fangirly earlier in the thread) and I am always so thrilled to see you have a new book out. You do succinct psychologically accurate drawing of women my age very well.

I'm nearly finished and am really enjoying it, thank you. This is the first of your books I have read but will not be the last.

The characters are so interesting and I love how they are revealed through the story, flaws and all.

Gretta reminds me of DH's Irish Grandmother, who I believe never married his grandfather when they ran away to England from Ireland in the forties, but no-one else seemed to realise so I've kept quiet.

Do you base your characters on real people? They seem incredibly alive to me.

Hallo Maggie. I've loved all of your books, but After You'd Gone remains my favourite and one of the few novels to make me cry on the tube, darn you. Have read it so many times.

I don't have a question; just wanted to say hello! Hope the poorly and teething ones are better soon.

I enjoyed IFAH and am intrigued - what came first, the ideas for the characters, or the story of the missing father? The latter seemed almost incidental to the (very well written and enjoyable) story of the children & wife.

Sorry if that seemed insulting about your work, it wasn't! I really enjoyed it - just i was surprised that by the end of the book I cared more about everyone else other than the father.

@BlackbeltinBS

Finished my copy. Thought it was a great start and enjoyed it but... not as good as I was hoping tbh. I loved The Hand that First Held Mine and Esme Lennox, not sure this is one I will be in a rush to reread just yet. I enjoyed Aoife's story.

Curious to know whether she deliberately picked 15th July (St Swithins Day - if it rains on St Swithins Day, it's supposed to rain for the next 40 days, and if it's dry, will stay dry for 40 days). Obviously in the book it's dry on 15th and I think that adds to the oppressiveness of the heat and that trapped feeling the characters have, like you know they're stuck in that situation?

Also, I'd like to know what the other novel was that MO was researching when she came up with this, and whether she thinks she'll go back to it?

Hello BBBS,

How very strange. I had never made that connection. I cannot for the life of me remember why I picked the 15th of July. I think it might have been in connection with the South-West forest fires mentioned in the book: I seem to remember building the novel’s timeframe around their dates. I had never noticed it was St Swithin’s Day, which is of course closely associated with weather. So thank you very much for pointing that out.

The other novel? Well, it was very different – sweeping and historical. I don’t know if I will ever go back to it. I still have all the notes and early drafts/chapters. They are sitting here on my shelf as I write this. I got them down and read them over when I finished IFAH but then I started something else. Which in itself is probably a bit of a sign.

All the best,
Maggie

Good evening, everyone..

I'm thrilled to welcome back the brilliant Maggie O'Farrell, who first joined Bookclub in 2011 to discuss THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE. We enjoyed her chat so much that we asked her to return, along with her excellent new novel INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE.

Maggie, thank you very much indeed once again for taking the time to be here tonight. And congratulations on both your growing family and your growing number of bestselling novels (and please tell us how the hell you do it!). We'll kick off with the advance questions from further up the thread. And then we'll aim to get through as many as possible over the next hour.

I'd also like to repeat two questions that we asked you before, but would love you to answer again for the benefit of new bookclubbers:

Which childhood book most inspired you?

What would be the first piece of advice you would give anyone attempting to write fiction?

Hi Maggie. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy life to talk to us. I love your writing, have all your books and have just started reading your first After You'd Gone again and thoroughly enjoying it. Please tell me you are not too busy being a mother to have time to write another novel.

Good evening Maggie,
I'd like to know which of your novels is your favourite.

For me, it's the vanishing act of esme lennox. I particularly liked the ending.

I'm sorry but IFAH didn't do it for me. I liked the characters and their dialogue was brilliant but the plot just didn't twist like I would have hoped.

What's next?

@Spottybra

I'm loving this book. There has been nothing better on a cold dark evening when the children are finally settled (about 9:40 ish) than reading about the family in a heatwave. I miss summer already. It has to be the best new book I have read in a long time. Am only about half way through though. Aoife not being diagnosed and helped despite being so bright made me cry, although to be fair I have recently gone through a similar experience with a 14 yr old student who has slipped through the net and hid it very well, so it really touched me. Can't wait to finish it and I care enough about the characters to wonder when the hell is Monica going to leave Peter? Why doesn't she want a baby, although I do know, it's there in the text what Aoife 'did' to their mother, but there has to be another reason surely?

Hello Spottybra, (Now there are some words I’ve never before put together)

I’m very pleased you’re enjoying the book. I miss summer for most of the year (and, living in Scotland, sometimes all year). That’s interesting about your 14-yr-old student. I think dyslexics become adept at concealment and coping strategies. It’s heartbreaking to witness. I hope your student is getting the help and reassurance he or she needs now?

As to Monica leaving Peter and her attitude to babies, I really shouldn’t say: you’ll find it all there in the book if you read to the end.

All the best,
Maggie

@slev

Finished my copy and if I'm honest, I struggled a bit. I wanted to know what happened (always the benefit of a plot with an unanswered mystery) so kept reading from that perspective but I just couldn't bring myself to like the characters. I really just wanted to give them all a good shake!

So my question for Maggie - how did you expect people to react to your characters? Did you intend them to be likeable or do you think it's more about having characters who inspire a reaction, positive or otherwise?

Hello Slev,

I’m sorry you were disappointed. I suppose all I can say is that you tend to write the kind of books you would like to read. Or I do. I don’t look for likeability in fictional characters; I look for it in life, as we all do, in our friends, but I don’t seek it in fiction. I lose interest in novels that paint people as either good or bad. I want characters in novels to offer me complexity, insight, conundrums, understanding, frustration, shock. Above all, I wanted to make the Riordans realistic and human and recognisable. To be that they had to be flawed and, at times, difficult, because aren’t we all?

All the best,
Maggie

@DuchessofMalfi

First of all I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the novel.

I found it an interesting examination of how fragile relationships are and how everything can turn on a lie and its discovery. Do you think Gretta and Robert's relationship would survive, now that everyone knows their secret? I really wanted to know what happened to his first wife, and wanted closure with his brother's story. Trying not to plot spoil :o

Aoife was my favourite character, and I was willing her to tell the truth and not destroy her relationship. Heaved a huge sigh of relief when she did :) And what on earth was Monica thinking of marrying Peter? There just didn't seem to be anything going for them at all.

And who did tell Joe about the abortion? Did I miss that? I wondered whether it was Gretta who put two and two together.

Hello Duchess,

Thanks so much for your lovely words about the book. I’m so pleased you enjoyed it.

Gretta and Robert: I always imagined them just carrying on as before. I think they are of a generation that didn’t believe in discussing and dissecting everything. I expect they would have said nothing, swept it all under the carpet and picked up their lives where they left off. What do you think?

There are a lot of unanswered questions in the book (what happened to Robert’s first wife, much of the brother’s story are all examples of this). I wanted the book to reflect life and I find there are always so many things you never get to the bottom of, so many things you never quite solve. I didn’t want to tie everything up neatly and tick every box. It would have felt disingenuous. I also find that I get more from books that don’t give all the answers: they live longer in your head because you are wondering and theorising about this person or that scenario, rather than just closing the books covers and thinking, that’s that.

As for who told Joe, I always imagined he worked it out for himself, after seeing Aoife flee from Hughie’s birthday party.

All the best,
Maggie

@SunshinePanda

I have been busy reading not just this novel but rereading Maggie's back catalogue over the past few weeks. Maggie, "you are good with secrets." My favourite book ever I think is The Hand That First Held Mine. As with Instructions for a Heatwave it is fascinating how a single decision has such repercussions and deeply buried impact on others. When writing did you start with this idea of deception or with a character (thinking really of Aoife)?

Hi there,

I think secrets are always going to exert a pull over novelists. We all have them, whether we’re prepared to admit it or not. It’s actually pretty hard to identify the starting point of a novel. You often have characters or concerns or scenes or conversations swirling around in your head and just one catalyst can bring them into focus. I’d been wanting to write something about the relationships between grown-up siblings and how they can alter over time (and also stay the same) and someone happened to remark to me that the number of people who disappear rises sharply during heatwaves. I could suddenly see a man walking away from his house and these grown-up siblings being called back to the house where they grew up. It seemed too tempting a situation to ignore.

All the best,
Maggie

@Feathered

This reminded me, in terms of oppressive heat, of "The Go-Between" by L.P. Hartley - I just wondered if you read that as part of your research?

Do you think you will write about these characters again? I finished the book wanting to know more!

Hi Feathered,

You all have such great names …

I have read The Go-Between, probably twice, but I didn’t read it in connection with this book. I should have done, now you mention it. I did re-read Alice in Wonderland, which starts with a very hot day. The heat is the reason Alice falls asleep, which of course leads to the adventure.

I don’t know if I will go back to the Riordans. I’ve never returned to a character before but you never know.

All best,
Maggie

@Paloolah

Hi. Really enjoyed the book. I'm intrigued by the title - presumably it refers to the snippets of the drought bill that introduce the chapters, and the expectations of people to behave in particular ways, but could Maggie tell us more about this? Thanks!

Hi there,
Yes, it refers most directly to the government bill passed in 1976 to cope with the drought. I liked the idea that the Riordans are thrown into chaos because of the heatwave and strictures put in place by the government are useless and ineffectual for what they are experiencing. The language of the bill is so formal and stern and reserved, in contrast to what is happening in domestic situations around the country. If the book shows anything, it shows that there are no instructions. All instructions are useless: you have to find your own way.
All the best,
Maggie

@dreamygirl

Loved this, thank you so much for my copy! Loved the emerging questions as the plot was laid out, the oppression of the weather adding to the difficulty of the situation, and found it really easy to get to know the characters! I especially loved all the attention to detail, there were some fantastic passages with lovely tiny details such as Aoife's feelings when Monica had blanked her in the house, that it had erased all those shared experiences she mentioned of sisterhood and sharing a room. I also liked the contrasts, such as the traditional approach to marriage & relationships that the Riordan children have be brought up with vs. Peter and Jenny's "modern" views for the time (and of course the revelation near the end about Gretta and Robert's own relationship). Monica and Aoife both feeling that they were the one excluded by the other 2 siblings. And Monica and Michael Francis' contrasting views of their mother's character, how Monica was desperate for her to become "large" again whereas the whole thing was such an embarrassment to Michael Francis. Contrary to some people's feelings I felt sorry for him & Claire, that they were both living with disappointment, a life they hadn't planned for (obviously of their own making but she seemed to think it was all his fault) and struggling to make the best of it. Some people have been offended by the OU comments but I think at the time it was held in a lower regard than nowadays, particularly by those from academic backgrounds. I felt a lot of sympathy towards Monica, the pressure she felt to live up to expectations, the fact that Joe didn't believe her about not wanting children and that Peter was so WEAK! For a really minor character her probably provoked the strongest reaction in me, I felt really angry with him at times!

I'm interested in the idea raised further up about St Swithun's day and if that was deliberate, to contribute to the sense of endlessness around the weather and the difficult situations, if that would have enhanced the fear Maggie O'Farrell mentions in her notes at the end.

Hello dreamygirl,

You live up to your name. Thank you for such a lovely message. It’s fascinating to read your interpretations and comments on the book.

I’m actually horrified that anyone would ascribe Michael Francis’ comments on the OU to me. I think the OU is a wonderful institution and I couldn’t be more supportive of its work. It never occurred to me that anyone would be offended by the argument between Michael Francis and Claire but perhaps I was being naive. Someone bore down on me recently in a signing queue with a very severe expression and demanded to know what I had against the OU. I only ever intended what Michael Francis says about the OU to show what a gulf has opened up between him and Claire and also … and here I’m going to quote someone on this thread because I couldn’t have put it better myself:

HellonHeels Mon 07-Oct-13 12:49:22
Oh yes the OU comments are out of order but presumably that's because the husband is a twat and they are designed to give us the heads up that he is?

Thank you HH.

All the best,
Maggie

@defineme

I was gripped by this book. I found I was most moved by the character Gretta ...the clinging onto her culture and desperate attempts at manipulating her children. The hypocritical living in sin is actually remarkably similar to a situation that was recently uncovered in my extended family!

My questions are:
Do your sisters ever wonder if elements of the sisters in your novels are based on them?
Do you remember the heatwave (I can remember people taking about it and I'm 40) and I too want to know why you chose to start on St Swithins day (just like the novel 'One Day')?

Hi defineme,

I’m glad you found Gretta moving. I enjoyed writing about her immensely. I was always happy when I switched on my laptop and realised I had a Gretta scene ahead of me. And how fascinating that you had a similar situation in your extended family. Would love to hear more, of course, but maybe this isn’t the time or the place…

My sisters would tear strips off me if I ever wrote about them - and rightly so. I wouldn’t ever write about someone close to me. It would be wrong in many ways. I had the odd experience a few years ago of reading a novel by someone who used to work in the same office as me (can’t say who) and realising that a very minor character was based on me aged about 24 or 25. It didn’t portray anything particularly negative but it was very disconcerting all the same. It made me even more determined to tread with care when creating fiction.

As for the heatwave, yes, I do remember it. I was four years old and we had moved from Ireland to South Wales, which was one of the areas very badly hit. I recall it as a time of great excitement and tension: there was no water coming out of the taps and we had to go to a standpipe in the street to collect our daily allowance.

All the best,
Maggie

@FaddyPeony

I liked the novel a lot and found Gretta very interesting -- I recognised her shiftiness and self-delusion and the constant talking thing as a device for deflecting discussion. Excellent. I liked the sibling relationships too, very well drawn.

Maggie, I always want to ask successful women writers about their experience. Do you think that there is still a tendency amongst critics to think 'meh, a book about children/families...how domestic.' Or has that landscape changed? And do you care, particularly?

Hello FP,

Very pleased you enjoyed the book: thank you.

I think there is undoubtedly a tendency to categorise books about families as ‘domestic novels’. But I refute this categorisation as it carries the implication that these are somehow small novels, dealing with minor human concerns. The family is far from a “small” subject: think of Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, novels vast in ambition, scope and depth. In the right hands, books that have the tightest of focus on one household, one marriage, one person can address the whole spectrum of human experience. In the bare bones of its plot, ‘Hamlet’ could be seen as a domestic drama: man kills his brother, shacks up with the wife, son suffers depression at his inability to avenge his dad. Does anyone call it ‘meh’? No.

All the best,
Maggie

@Clawdy

I loved the book,and became very involved in the lives of the characters especially Monica. I also enjoyed re-living the incredible heatwave of 1976,no-one who lived through it will forget it! My question is about the swarms of redbacked aphids! In the North-West it was ladybirds which covered gateposts and pavements?

Hi Clawdy,

You’re right, of course, there were swarms of ladybirds. I remember picking hundreds of them off our hedge and collecting them in matchboxes.

There were aphid swarms as well in the 1976 heatwave and the reason I chose to write about them instead is based on slightly obsessive compulsive issues over words. I hate the look of the word ‘ladybird’. It’s the cluster of ‘dyb’: can’t abide it. Also, it would have been translated in the States as ‘ladybug’, which is so much worse. I can barely bring myself to type it.

Whereas ‘aphid’: what a beautiful word.

All the best,
Maggie

@Plus3

Have this book to read next, but can I ask a question about After you'd gone which may be a spoiler??

I love this book, and made everyone I knew read it. The end.... Only one other person agreed with me - I feel that Alice is coming out of her coma, moving towards life. Nearly everybody else thought she died.

Please tell me that I am right! It is such a beautiful book.

Hi Plus3,

Thank you for saying you like ‘After You’d Gone’. I’m so pleased you enjoyed it.

The ending: I get a lot of questions about this. I once had a letter from a man who wrote to tell me I had ruined his honeymoon. His wife started AYG on the plane, spent the next few days crying, so he read it and then they argued for the rest of the holiday over whether she died or not.

I like ambiguous endings (see the post above). I don’t enjoy books that tie everything up too definitively so I did make the end of AYG deliberately ambiguous. It’s open to interpretation. Nobody’s wrong (as I wrote back to the honeymoon man). But to my mind, she absolutely lives. She’s rising back to the surface, she’s returning to the world.

All the best,
Maggie

@Phaedra11

I really enjoyed the book and particularly appreciated the way you could warm to the characters and sympathise with them, as well as recognising them as complex individuals with their own hang-ups and flaws. I really felt for Monica at the same time as being glad she wasn't my sister!

Whenever I've read Maggie's more recent books, I've remembered an interview I read from when she was pregnant with her first child. She said she was worried about "the pram in the hall" syndrome and whether having a child would affect the time and commitment she could give to her writing. I would be really interested to hear what Maggie thinks about combining writing and parenthood now.

Hello Phaedra,

Thank you for your post. What you said about Monica made me laugh.

I still loathe that Cyril Connolly quote. I think it’s something that will always be slung at women writers. But the more books I write and the more children I have, the more I know it to be total rubbish. Having children solidifies your connection with the world and widens your experience and those things can only ever be good for your writing. There is also the sense of children as editors. I don’t mean that my kids are made to go through my manuscripts with a red pen but that having increased time pressure ensures that only the good things make it to the page. I firmly believe this. So much of what you do as a writer takes place away from your desk. I’m not saying that it’s easy to write novels while you have three young children. It isn’t. But it’s no harder than it is for any mother who also has a job; in many ways, it’s easier because I get to be at home with them. I don’t have to clock in and out, as many women do. All books are written against impossible odds; the odds just change. If you want to write, you will find the time, even if it means staying up until dawn.

All the best,
Maggie

@TillyBookClub

Good evening, everyone..

I'd also like to repeat two questions that we asked you before, but would love you to answer again for the benefit of new bookclubbers:

Which childhood book most inspired you?

What childhood book most inspired you?

I loved the Moomin books by Tove Jansson, also The Secret Garden and Alice in Wonderland. I used to want to be Pippi Longstocking. You couldn’t ask for more in a fictional female role model. Forget the whole princess culture: give your daughters Pippi to read and they will grow up independent, questioning and strong

What would be the first piece of advice you would give anyone attempting to write fiction?

The best advice I ever got was: keep going. I would also say not to worry too much about beginnings. Beginnings are hard. They are still the part I have to rewrite and rework the most. Just launch into your story at whatever point you like. You can go back and fix the rest later. There is great comfort to be had in word count.

That's the end of my pre-prepared questions. Now for the descent into sleep-deprived, ungrammatical freefall...

Maggie you're doing a wonderful job, and you're in good company

@HormonalHousewife

I was absolutely thrilled to receive a copy in the post as I 'discovered' only recently Maggie's earlier books. I tend to be a read once and then give away kind of book person as I feel life is too short to read the same book over and over. Exceptions are made occasionally where books are kept on my bookshelf to re-read (and this includes the hand tfhm, the distance bu and After you'd gone) couldnt wait to start reading this one.

I must admit however, it didnt live up to my expectations. I enjoyed it yes, but I found the end a bit Harold Fry... and I have to admit I have given the book away already to my sister.

They were all interesting characters, Monica and Michael Francis particularly.

My question to Maggie is which authors inspired you and what book are you reading at the moment ?

Sorry to hear it was disappointing. Maybe your sister will like it more. Haven't read Harold Fry but obviously I must ...

Authors that inspired me include Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, William Boyd, Michele Roberts, Alice Munro, Amy Bloom, the Brontes, Trollope, James Hogg, Albert Camus, Robert Browning, Anthony Burgess ... the list goes on. I've just finished re-reading Anna Karenina (for about the fourth time, i think - I try to read it at least once a decade) and am about to start Alice Munro's latest collection.
All the best,
Maggie