One of the U.K.’s most beloved writers—with over 1.5 million books in print—returns with “a beautiful portrait of family life amid an unravelling crisis” — The Telegraph

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.