Heat Wave

It is a May day at World's End. The beginning of a long, hot summer in Pauline Carter's greystone cottage in England, about two hours outside of London. Pauline is copyediting an allegory of romantic love. Her daughter, Theresa and her husband Maurice, and their son, Luke live in the second half of the cottage. Maurice is a professor and writer and is busy writing a travel journal of local places. He often invites his editor and his girlfriend down for the weekend to help with each chapter. The issue is Maurice's infatuation with his editor's girlfriend. Oh, what memories this stirs in Pauline's heart. She fears for Theresa, who is so in love with her husband.Years ago, Pauline fell in love with Harry, a professor and bon vivant. Pauline and Harry married much to everyone's surprise. Harry was known as a lady's man and not the type to marry. And, in due course, Theresa was born to Pauline and Harry. Harry was not much of a father, he loved Theresa but was not involved in her life. Much the same could be said of Maurice and his behavior with Luke. Pauline is so afraid for Theresa, she could sense imminent betrayal, and no one was speaking of it. Pauline was much respected by Maurice, but he offered no excuses nor did he feel he needed to excuse his behavior. This type of thing just happpened.Penelope Lively has given us an elegant portrayal of fragile family dynamics that have already been greatly affected by adultery. Pauline will do anything to assist her daughter, and she opens her heart to Theresa. She discusses her own life with Theresa's father, and the fact that she should have left him long before she did. However, Theresa is not ready to discuss anything about her husband with Pauline at this time- denial is the name of the game. Pauline must take little steps with her daughter and support her as best she can.This is once again, a book not to be put down. Penelope Lively has a habit of writing this kind of novel. The conclusion adds a form of the unusual and unexpected. I was not ready for this story to end, but the author knows best. We realize that the anxiety and suspicion we have felt has led to frustration, and now we can look at the situation with clearer eyes. This is Penelope Lively's eleventh novel, and I must read each one. She is an author unlike any other. Each book is better than the last, but how can that be? A witty and intelligent author with every novel a number one in my book! prisrob

If you haven't yet discovered this Booker Award-winning British novelist, now's a good time to pick up one of her many books. Moon Tiger is her most well-known novel, but the others deserve equal attention. In Heat Wave, Lively aims her magnifying glass on Pauline Carter and her married daughter. It starts out as a quiet story, set in a summer cottage in England's bucolic countryside. But with each turn of the page, the tension increases and increases...and increases...until the stunning conclusion just knocks your socks off. At it's base, it's a story of romance. Pauline is editing an allegory of romantic love while watching her daughter, Teresa, struggle with the romantic side of her married life, after realizing that her son-in-law is conducting an affair right under their noses. About midpoint, you think you know where this book is heading. You would be wrong. Lively, in all her books, is fascinated with the conflict and difference between what is real and what appears on the surface. The serenity of the countryside is offset by the violence of the natural world; the appearance of romance is threatened by cynical adultery; love is marred by jealousy.Don't miss this book; it's one of her best.

I had not read a Penelope Lively novel in so long, I had forgotten how brilliant a writer she can be. Her talent is very evident in "Heat Wave." A deceptively simple story with very dark undertones, the book is a masterpiece of "novel-as-understatement."Long-divorced Pauline, a freelance book editor, is spending the summer at her country cottage, World's End, with her daughter Theresa and her family--husband Morris, baby son Luke. Theresa and family occupy one half of the duplex, and Pauline the other. It's an agreeable relationship that allows each household the privacy it needs as well as the companionship, as the entire family gathers for dinner and other outings.All is seemingly serene in both houses, but as the weather turns hotter in an unusually strong heat wave, the civilized overlay between the adults gradually melts away. For in an almost obscene coincidence, as far as Pauline is concerned, her daughter's husband Morris is engaged in an affair that is destined to break Theresa's heart--the same as Pauline's was broken many years ago by her husband (and Theresa's father) Harry.The similarities between Morris and Harry are chilling. Both are authors. Both are self-centered, charming, and careless of their women. Both have affairs with young women who are "editorial groupies." As Pauline watches Morris become increasingly involved with Carol, the vacuous girlfriend of his own editor, Jack, she begins to relive (and re-feel) the horrible emotions she encountered as a young wife betrayed by her own cheating husband. The novel moves effortlessly between the present and the past as Pauline watches her own daughter's betrayal and is helpless to stop it. As her emotions churn, so does the weather. Only Luke, the innocent baby, is unaware of the terrible events unfolding all around him, and only Luke is unscathed in the end. Similar in tone to the works of Joanna Trollope, "Heat Wave" is just about as good as it gets. It is beautifully written, spare and to-the-point, and it ensnares the reader completely in its seemingly simple story of love and loss.

This book is very well written. The characters come fully to life and Ms. Lively examines the emotion of jealousy with a thoroughness that I haven't come across before. Most people who have ever been jealous or insecure in a relationship will be able to relate to Ms. Lively's characters who suffer from jealousy, but Ms. Lively takes the plot a step further and introduces an observer - the mother - who cannot stand to see her daughter cheated on, in part because the mother went through the same agony. This book isn't bashing men or relationships, though; Ms. Lively includes loyal men and healthy relationships in the novel. You wonder, though: is Ms. Lively intellectually compelled by the notion of jealousy, or has she felt it herself to this extent? The novel is balanced between careful observation and heated emotion.

Set against the backdrop of the English countryside in the hottest summer on record, this novel explores the relationship between a mother and daughter as it develops in a crisis. Four people, representing three generations of a family, are spending the summer at World's End, a pair of stone farming cottages in a remote cornfield. We have Pauline, Mother and Grandmother, staunchly independent at 55, long since divorced from Theresa's father. Theresa, 29, glowing with marital happiness and maternal contentment. Maurice, Theresa's husband, charming and self-centred at 44. And then there is Luke, Theresa and Maurice's 18-month-old child. Pauline has known Maurice for years, and doesn't trust him. When she first knew Maurice, he flitted from woman to woman and, like all their friends, Pauline found this a bit of a joke. The idea of Maurice as a son-in-law she finds less amusing. Theresa is in love with Maurice and Pauline is appalled, afraid for her daughter's vulnerability. When Maurice is unfaithful to Theresa, Pauline is the first to guess. As she watches him interact with his lover and his wife, painful memories are stirred up of her own destructive passion for an unfaithful husband. The author neatly interweaves the present and the past, drawing uncanny parallels between Theresa's current situation and Pauline's past one. As Pauline sees Theresa's happiness disintegrate into uncertainty and then despair, she is filled with rage. Sensing his mother-in-law's growing hostility towards him, Maurice confronts Pauline, leading to the book's startling climax. This is a powerful novel that will absorb you completely. You will need to read it at least twice.