Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

This is the second book that I have read in the last month where the events occur during a heatwave; both times I have been really impressed with the way the heatwave becomes an integral part of the story. In this current book – Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell – after months of no rain and oppressive heat, Robert Riordan tells his wife that he is going to the corner store one morning and then never returns. His departure is the basis for a reluctant reunion of his wife Gretta and their 3 children; Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife.  O’Farrell weaves the heaviness of the heat in and around the stories of the Riordan families’ lives; the heat affects them, it affects their ability to think, to make decisions, it makes them tired and lethargic. It’s brilliant really, the way that the heatwave is such a crucial element to the story. You know that if things had been different, if the temperature had been more normal, it’s entirely possible that this story would play out in a completely different way.

Instructions for a Heatwave is really the story of a family and its secrets. It’s the story of how you can be closer to someone that anyone else and still not really know anything about them; you can never know the inner depths to a person if they don’t want you to. Everyone in the Riordan family has their secrets and the keeping of those secrets is what has driven them all to this moment, to Robert walking out and a tension between the siblings so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

 Michael Francis’ marriage is failing; his wife has pretty much clocked out of the marriage as well as being a mother to their two young children. Michael Francis and Claire got pregnant and married too young (in that order). Neither of them are happy, but while Michael Francis is trying his best, Claire has gone back to school, has found new friends and is slowly changing her appearance ‘The Industrial Revolution and its effects on the middle classes,” she says, turning to face him, putting an arm over her page, and he experiences a dissolving feeling in his abdomen. Part lust, part horror at her short hair. He still hasn’t got used to it, still can’t forgive her for it. He’d come home a few weeks ago and opened the front door, as yet innocent of what had occurred behind it that day, as yet full of trust that his wife was still the person she’d always been.”  I could quote this entire page to be honest, it’s a beautiful ode to Michael Francis’ love for Claire personified in his love of her hair; that she has viciously shorn with no regard for her husband. There is a heart wrenching scene a few pages later where Michael Francis is attempting to make dinner while one of his children is constantly asking questions, Claire is leaving and seems reluctant to give Michael Francis any information about where she is going, and the other child is starting to panic about Claire leaving. The scene is complete chaos; I felt stress just reading it.

Monica, the middle child, refuses to acknowledge out loud that her life is not perfect. She feels that she has failed at everything that she has ever tried, and never seems to realize that maybe she needs to change herself before things will get better. O’Farrell really hit the mark with Monica and I really identify with her, although I wish I didn’t! She lets her fear of failure, of being less than perfect affect everything in her life and ends up settling for things that don’t make her happy. She is married to a man that she has nothing in common with, a man who has two daughters; daughters that Monica would love to be a mother to, but they won’t let her in and she does all the wrong things to connect with them. Monica’s biggest problem is herself, her self-persecution and her martyr complex. ‘Homesick: she’s found that it really does make you feel sick, ill, maddened by longing. But by evening, she is always ready, her grief behind her, hidden, like a deformity she must cover up. Hair up. Makeup on. Supper on the range. She will make this work; she will not go back; she will not let on to anyone; she will not show them that she’s been beaten again. Monica with her failed nursing degree, her childlessness, her husband who left her: she won’t be that person. She will live here in this house with its shaky roof, its skirting-boards that scuttle at night, its moth-eaten furniture, its hostile neighbors. She will live here and she will say nothing.”

Aoife, the youngest, is the child who invites the most sympathy, by far. She is dyslexic in a time when the disease was not understood and definitely not often diagnosed. Aoife was a difficult baby which was the start of her problems. When she started school things just got worse. Her parents and teachers blamed her for not being able to read. No matter what they tried she never got better, but Aoife wasn’t a meek child and when her elders pushed, she pushed back. As soon as she was old enough she left home and pretty much lived as a squatter until leaving for America. Although freer in New York, Aoife still keeps the secret of her illiteracy. Aoife herself does not understand her problem and so is embarrassed by it. She tells no one, not even those closest to her; and lives by memorizing everything that she can or using the age old technique of asking for help after pretending to have lost her glasses. ‘She feels herself to be cursed, like those people in folktales who are singled out for the random cruelty of some higher being, condemned forever to have a wing instead of an arm or to live underground or to take the form of a reptile. She cannot read. She cannot do the thing that other people find so artlessly easy: to see arrangements of inked shapes on a page and alchemize them into meaning. She can create letters, she can form them with the nib of a pen or the lead of a pencil, but she cannot get them to line up in the right order, in a sequence that anyone else could understand. She can hold words in her head- she hoards them there – she can spin sentences, paragraphs, whole books in her mind; she can stack up words inside herself but she cannot get these words down her arm through her fingers and out onto a page. She doesn’t know why this is. She suspects that, as a baby, she crossed paths with a sorcerer who was in a bad mood that day and, on seeing her, on passing her pram, decided to suck this magical ability from her, to leave her cast out, washed up on the shores of illiteracy and ignorance, cursed forever.’ I realize that this is a long quote, but I found it very poignant and a perfect description of the isolation that Aoife must feel. She lives her life constantly on the edge of her seat; afraid of being found out, ready to end one life and try to find another. In reading other reviews of this book I have seen criticisms of O’Farrell not getting Aoife to tell anyone of her problem, but I don’t agree with them. Anyone who had lived the childhood that Aoife did, with no one trying to understand the problem, instead just telling her to try harder and Aoife believing herself to be cursed – of course she feels like she can’t tell anyone. Who would support or believe her? No one has before. I feel for Aoife, desperately. Reading is my solace, it’s my happy place, my calm place; and not having that in my life is possibly one of the most terrifying things that I can imagine.

Robert’s disappearance is not the point of this story; it’s really just the catalyst for the siblings being reunited and a chance to come back together after years of separation. Families are complicated but when it comes down to it, blood is thicker than water. You may keep secrets from them, but they rarely remain hidden forever. And in the end no is closer to you than your family and no one else can understand where you come from. I am not sure where Robert has gone, or why. There seems to be a secret that Gretta may be keeping, she does not seem to be freaking out about his disappearance, but is more concerned about her children. Monic and Aoife have been divided by another secret for years but maybe this is their chance to put the past behind them. Either way, I am looking forward to finishing this book. The characters are all completely defined and unique; I am invested in all of their lives and really hope at least one of them gets out happy.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Book to movie adaptations; you either hate them or you love them. Me, I’m somewhere in-between. Early on in my reading career I realized that I was never going to be happy with adaptations unless I learned to separate them in my mind. For the most part I do this pretty well; I am able to pretend the book and the movie are two totally separate entities that just happen to be about the same subject. Sometimes I even look forward to the movie – I am not great a visualising things in my head and I like to have a visual of a character.  Of course this can very easily go wrong. The worst things for me are bad casting and when they change things for the movie that don’t need to be changed (this seems to happen a lot). The one thing that is most important to me though is that I read the book first. I want to form my own impressions and opinions before someone else tells me what to see. All of this preamble is because my boyfriend has been trying to get me to watch Child 44 with him for months. I have been putting it off and ignoring him whenever he suggests it since I didn’t have the book and I am not supposed to be buying any more books – so I was hoping that I could find it in a second hand shop somewhere. AND I needed the copy WITHOUT the movie cover. (I know. I’m picky.) Anyway! Trying to not make a long story any longer than I have already made it – I was able to find a copy that met my needs and am now reading it so that I don’t have to make Malcolm wait any longer!

All that being said – this is going to be one messed up movie. Child 44 takes place in post war Russian, where the only crime that exists is spying against the state. Anyone can be guilty of that crime – doing anything out of your normal routine can cause you to become a suspect and once you become a suspect you are automatically assumed guilty. Leo Demidov, an idealistic security officer has his unwavering loyalty shaken when a series of events leads him to believe that maybe the state isn’t as honest and absolute as they purport. A little boy has been murdered and since murder doesn’t exist, any investigation is being quashed, and Demidov discovers that maybe being suspected of

espionage and actually being guilty of it are two very different things. When things start to get a little more personal and his wife is accused of being a spy, Demidov does the only thing his conscience will allow and ends up being demoted to a remote village outside of Moscow. Here he works for the local militia – the job is demeaning, dealing with crimes that shouldn’t be happening, and he is not trusted by the locals. Leo was a bright shining star with the state police and its unusual for someone disgraced to be allowed to live… When another child shows up murdered in this small town, in the same way as the boy in Moscow, Demidov beings to think that there may be more afoot and starts an investigation, one that could place him and his wife in either further danger.   

This is another mid-point review, and of course, the mid-point occurs exactly as things get interesting. Not that they weren’t already. Child 44 has so many layers that are so intricately woven… I wish I had better words to describe it. Smith has done a brilliant job in recreating the fear and oppression of Stalin’s Russia – a time a admittedly know nothing about. I’m not sure how much of this story is historical, but I am really hoping none of it is. The entire population lives in fear of the state, everyone and anyone expects to be searched or followed at any given moment. Smith describes the three levels of cells in the main state police building and I had shivers “some were ankle deep in freezing water, the walls covered in mold and slime… there were narrow closets, like wooden coffins, where bedbugs had been left to multiply and in which a prisoner would remain, naked, feasted upon, until ready to sign a confession… there were cork-lined rooms were prisoners were heated, cooked by the building’s ventilation system, until blood seeped out of their pores.”

There is also the relationship between Demidov and his wife, Raisa. At first they seem like the perfect couple – both beautiful, Leo is the strong, loyal policeman, and Raisa is the perfect Russian housewife. But things there are not what they seem as well – which poor Demidov only learns after their lives turn to hell. Smith has done a great job of creating their characters and their relationship. No one is exactly what they seem, which makes perfect sense given the temperament of the country in which they live. Everyone must hide their secret selves, their desires and their fears. Only when Leo and Raisa have gone through the worst, and somehow come out alive, can they truly be honest with each other. This layer is truly brilliant, I must say. As interested as I am in every other aspect of this story, this is one that I am most enjoying. Their entire married lives they have never communicated honestly with each other and watching them struggle now – to be honest, to communicate when necessary, to throw off all of their assumptions… Demidov also has to start being honest with himself, which may be even harder “How different was he from his moral opposite? Was the difference merely that Vasili was senselessly cruel while he’d been idealistically cruel? One was empty, indifferent cruelty while the other was a principled, pretentious cruelty which thought of itself as reasonable and necessary. But in real terms, in destructive terms, there was little to separate the two men. Had Leo lacked the imagination to realize what he was involved in? Or was it worse than that - had he chosen not to imagine it? He’d shut down those thoughts, brushed them aside.”

Watching Demidov now try to solve a crime is also slightly horrifying. In a country where there is no crime, there is also no method of dealing with it. Demidov has no forensic training and is doing his best with the little information that he has. Most people are not willing to help; since Demidov is mistrusted no one wants to get in trouble for helping him. This brings another element that I am loving to the book. Demidov’s methods are all based on his intuition – normally he decides who is guilty and finds (or makes up) the evidence to convict them. This time he needs to find the evidence to lead him in the right direction, and that’s not a path he is used to taking. Smith leads us through Demidov’s mind as he plans and thinks and figures things out in such a good way – you struggle right alongside of Demidov.

The only thing that has been bothering me is the blurb on the back of the book. It states “But when a murderer kills at will and Leo dares to investigate, the State’s obedient servant finds himself demoted and exiled.” This is actually completely inaccurate. Demidov does not start his investigation until after his demotion – which has nothing to do with the murder. This is a pretty big distinction. Part of what makes Demidov so real is that it takes the destruction of his glass castle to make him realize what is real and what is important. He’s not a hero sacrificing everything for some noble cause. He’s beaten and broken and trying his best to get by, trying his best to sleep at night and trying to prove himself to Raisa and to himself. 

1974 by David Peace

Now, I know that normally I do my book reviews at the midpoint… but having a few reviews under my belt by now, I have come to the realization that that doesn’t always work. Sometimes there is no secret to be uncovered so there is nothing for me to guess at. Other times I am just too enthralled in the story; the thought of stopping and then taking the few days to write a review is just too hard! Sometimes a book is just so messed up that if I stop reading I may start to realize just how fucked up it is, and I will never start reading again. That was the case for Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace.

Nineteen Seventy Four is the first of four in a series entitled the Red Riding Quartet. The series deals with police and political corruption in Yorkshire and was inspired by the Yorshire Ripper murders – active between 1975 and 1980. It’s the story of Eddie Dunford, The Evening Post’s new crime reporter, promoted days after his father death. Right away Eddie gets in over his head; trying to connect the disappearance of a little girl to those of other missing girls, he is told under no circumstances to explore the connection. Days later when the little girl is found dead with swan wings stitched into her back Eddie is more determined than ever to find the connection. Unfortunately, Eddie is a coward and not too bright… not really the guy to bring the underhanded politically connected to light. The story itself is kind of insane and I am not sure that I could even try to begin to explain it. Eddie goes down a rabbit hole that connects just about everyone to the murder; from construction workers to police officers, business men and local politicians. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with any of the information he obtains, half of it comes to him by accident, and he can’t seem to stop getting beat up. All the while his mother is in mourning and trying to get him to come home.  

The story is incredibly convoluted, although it mostly comes together in the end. I know a guy who has read all 4 books and he says that the stories make more sense when read as a whole – so I guess I will have to get on the rest of them soon! Cause they weird thing is – even though it was confusing and horrifying; I devoured the book. It was compelling and intriguing… and I needed to know whether Eddie even made it out alive (it was touch and go many times).

I had never heard of David Peace before being recommended this series, so I did a bit of research on him before writing my review. He seems like a pretty interesting character. He grew up in Yorkshire around the time of the Yorkshire Ripper Murders and became obsessed with the murders, even to the point of being afraid that his father might be the ripper. It turned out to be one Peter Sutcliffe who was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder another 7. It was a pretty scary time in Yorkshire and left a lasting impression on Peace, as he says in an interview with Crime Time “I wrote about Yorkshire in the 1970s and early 1980s because that was where I was and when I grew up and I still have the scars.” Peace also goes on to talk about the responsibility of being a crime writer; “I believe the crime writer, by their choice of genre, is obligated to document these times and their crimes, and the writer who choose to ignore the responsibility is then simply exploiting, for his or her own financial or personal gratification, a genre that is itself nothing more than an entertainment industry constructed upon the sudden, violent deaths of other, innocent people and the unending, suffering of their families.” Normally I am not so interested in an author’s background – but the uniqueness of the horror that Peace writes had me intrigued. He is critical of most other crime writers, while praising the efforts of a few  - but he is very specific about his criteria for how crime should be written “Crime is brutal, harrowing and devastating for everyone involved, and crime fiction should be every bit as brutal, harrowing and devastating as the violence of the reality it seeks to document. Anything less as best sanitises crime and its effects, at worst trivialises it. Anything more exploits other people’s misery as purely vicarious entertainment. It is a very, very fine line.” It was very interesting to read these statements given that I found Peace’s descriptions of the crimes in his book as particularly gratuitous – he wants his writing to be ‘brutal, harrowing and devastating’ so how does he even determine what is crossing the line? How does one determine how much and which ‘truth’ should be given out? Especially when one is writing crime ‘fiction’?

It keeps making me laugh that I rated this book so highly yet I seem to be pretty disparaging about it. I definitely do not recommend it for everyone, maybe only fans of pretty descriptive crime writing, or rather people who don’t mind it. I am looking forward to finishing the series. I want to know where Eddie ends up in life… I don’t expect he makes it very far….