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Heat Lightning
Helen Hull was once a well-known American novelist and Heat Lightning, her sixth book, was a Book-of-the-Month Club Selection for April 1932. The plot is simple: Amy Norton comes home for a week’s visit to her hometown in Michigan (the town is unnamed but must owe a lot to Albion, where Helen Hull grew up): ‘Now that she was back in the town of her childhood, standing on a corner across from the village triangle of green, a small pyramid of luggage at her feet, Amy’s one clear thought, over the fluttering of unimportant recognitions, was “Why on earth have I come?”’ Her husband has gone on holiday without her, her two children are at summer camp, and she is hoping to work out why she is unhappy. She looks with detached eyes at every member of the Westover family, all of whom live within striking distance of their old home; and, having been away for so long, is able to observe her female relations with fresh eyes and to see that ‘each of them lived true to her own code, without conflict or rebellion. And I – Amy moved restlessly – I don’t know what my code is.’ Yet, over the course of the sultry summer week, with flashes of lightning never far away, she starts to understand herself better and to have a new insight into the lives of her relations: the matriarchal ‘Madam Westover’ her grandmother; her parents Alfred and Catherine; her brother and sister Ted and Mary, who has just given birth to another child; and her aunt and her two unmarried children. As Amy comes to realise, the Westover family, into which ‘foreigners’ have married, is a microcosm of the larger society, each member with his own code, derived blindly from distant soil.’ The result, which is what Helen Hull is describing, is that ‘the individual has nothing firm upon which he can lean, nor has he even any definite way of life against which he can rebel: he is under the necessity of determining for himself how he shall act and think.’
It is the summer after the Great Crash of 1929 and, as in so many Persephone books, everything happens and nothing happens; however, a book which is simply about family life turns out to be unputdownable. ‘Although Heat Lightning focuses on domestic life,’ writes the American academic Patricia McClelland Miller in her Persephone Preface, ‘it is, at its core, a novel of ideas, even though not all of the book’s readers would have recognised it as such.’ Indeed, the book with which most Persephone readers will compare it is Dorothy Whipple’s Greenbanks. ‘Like Dorothy Whipple, Helen Hull’s perception, her clarity of expression and her ability to tease out the quiet, unspoken thoughts and fears that ripple under the surface of each of our lives is magnificent,’ wrote Rachel of Book Snob, adding, ‘it takes true skill to rivet the heart and mind while remaining within the four walls of the family home, and I can’t praise Helen Hull’s abilities enough.’
It is the summer after the Great Crash of 1929 and, as in so many Persephone books, everything happens and nothing happens; however, a book which is simply about family life turns out to be unputdownable. ‘Although Heat Lightning focuses on domestic life,’ writes the American academic Patricia McClelland Miller in her Persephone Preface, ‘it is, at its core, a novel of ideas, even though not all of the book’s readers would have recognised it as such.’ Indeed, the book with which most Persephone readers will compare it is Dorothy Whipple’s Greenbanks. ‘Like Dorothy Whipple, Helen Hull’s perception, her clarity of expression and her ability to tease out the quiet, unspoken thoughts and fears that ripple under the surface of each of our lives is magnificent,’ wrote Rachel of Book Snob, adding, ‘it takes true skill to rivet the heart and mind while remaining within the four walls of the family home, and I can’t praise Helen Hull’s abilities enough.’
328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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191 people want to read
About the author
Helen R. Hull
29 books1 followerHelen Rose Hull was brought up in Michigan, the eldest child of a schools superintendent and a former teacher. Early on she and her brother became financially responsible for their family. She went to Lansing High School and Michigan State University and was a schoolteacher; after graduate work she went to Wellesley College to teach creative writing. Here she met Mabel Louise Robinson with whom she lived for the rest of her life. Their home was in New York and, in summer, in North Brooklin, Maine. She joined the Department of English at Columbia in 1916 and taught there for the next forty years, becoming professor. In New York she was a key member of the Heterodoxy Club, a group of outstanding and unorthodox women. She published numerous short stories and the first of her 17 novels came out in 1922, the last in 1963.
- from the back cover of 'Heat Lightning' published by Persephone Books
- from the back cover of 'Heat Lightning' published by Persephone Books
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 27, 2024
I spent a couple of days looking for my next book to read, and after pulling a few off the shelf and deciding I wasn't in the mood, I went to my Persephone shelf because I knew any one of those would be a sure winner. Bingo!
The narrator of this book was Amy, whose kids were off at camp and her husband on a fishing trip (maybe), so she decides to visit her parents in Michigan for a few days. She thought she would get a chance to relax, but interacting with family is never a good way to accomplish that.
However, the real star of this novel is Grandmother Westover, who lives right next door and relishes her role as family matriarch. What a grand lady she turned out to be, ruling them all in life and even in death, as the year is 1930 and she's the one with the money. The middle class is just beginning to feel the pinch and desperation of the depression, and unlike some in this family, the reader knows this won't turn around overnight.
When grandmother dies during Amy's visit, things really get nasty. We all either know of or have experienced for ourselves what happens in a family when money rears its ugly head, but this family turns into a train wreck that you can't look away from. I was a nervous wreck myself each time the phone or the doorbell rang, knowing a new revelation was coming. It didn't help that there was a heat wave and a drought and no air conditioning. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole scenario, from the safe distance of almost 100 years later.
Helen Hull was the author of another book I read and loved a few years ago, "Islanders", about an unmarried woman who took care of everyone in her family except herself. Hull seems to excel at family drama, and is another forgotten author who deserves a comeback. Persephone publishers thought so too.
The narrator of this book was Amy, whose kids were off at camp and her husband on a fishing trip (maybe), so she decides to visit her parents in Michigan for a few days. She thought she would get a chance to relax, but interacting with family is never a good way to accomplish that.
However, the real star of this novel is Grandmother Westover, who lives right next door and relishes her role as family matriarch. What a grand lady she turned out to be, ruling them all in life and even in death, as the year is 1930 and she's the one with the money. The middle class is just beginning to feel the pinch and desperation of the depression, and unlike some in this family, the reader knows this won't turn around overnight.
When grandmother dies during Amy's visit, things really get nasty. We all either know of or have experienced for ourselves what happens in a family when money rears its ugly head, but this family turns into a train wreck that you can't look away from. I was a nervous wreck myself each time the phone or the doorbell rang, knowing a new revelation was coming. It didn't help that there was a heat wave and a drought and no air conditioning. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole scenario, from the safe distance of almost 100 years later.
Helen Hull was the author of another book I read and loved a few years ago, "Islanders", about an unmarried woman who took care of everyone in her family except herself. Hull seems to excel at family drama, and is another forgotten author who deserves a comeback. Persephone publishers thought so too.
January 7, 2016
It's 1930, and the Great Depression is starting to bite at the middle classes in America. Amy Norton's two kids are in camp and her husband has gone fishing - or has he? With marital insecurities in the back of her mind, she arrives in her home town where her grandmother is the grande dame of the small town, to find her parents and her grandmother caught up in the financial and emotional problems of her extended family.
This forgotten novel was a delight. Amy is both an outsider and a player in the unfolding dramas, with grownup siblings and cousins married to all kinds of inlaws and almost everybody scrabbling for the limited pot of family money. It gives her a unique perspective, while at the same time, half of her mind is on her own problems back home in New York.
This forgotten novel was a delight. Amy is both an outsider and a player in the unfolding dramas, with grownup siblings and cousins married to all kinds of inlaws and almost everybody scrabbling for the limited pot of family money. It gives her a unique perspective, while at the same time, half of her mind is on her own problems back home in New York.
September 6, 2025
This is set at the start of the Great Depression, following the Wall Street Crash. We are "at home" with a family all dealing with their own crises as Amy returns to her parents' home in the Midwest to escape her own domestic drama in New York
Much of the book I enjoyed as it exemplified the social history of the time especially in relation to womens lives across the generations. All of them veering close to cliche but narrowly escaping (in my opinion). Some of the narrative I found extraneous but have to accept that this is a period novel, published contemporaneously (1932)
The family dynamics were well drawn but set up to make sure we had, perhaps too many ingredients - the philanderer/s, the worried businessman, the fertile mother producing no son, the entitled drunkard, the pacifier, the judgmental etc
The return home of Amy reminded me of Cassandra at The Wedding even though it was written 30 years later!
Enjoyed but didn't love
Much of the book I enjoyed as it exemplified the social history of the time especially in relation to womens lives across the generations. All of them veering close to cliche but narrowly escaping (in my opinion). Some of the narrative I found extraneous but have to accept that this is a period novel, published contemporaneously (1932)
The family dynamics were well drawn but set up to make sure we had, perhaps too many ingredients - the philanderer/s, the worried businessman, the fertile mother producing no son, the entitled drunkard, the pacifier, the judgmental etc
The return home of Amy reminded me of Cassandra at The Wedding even though it was written 30 years later!
Enjoyed but didn't love
June 22, 2015
Heat Lightning is a domestic American novel; set in an unnamed Michigan town, presumably reminiscent to the one Helen Hull herself grew up in. It is summer 1930, when Amy Norton arrives back in the town she grew up in, to stay for a week with her family. Her husband has gone on a fishing holiday, her two children are at summer camp, and Amy must work out what it is that is wrong with her marriage.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
August 24, 2016
An interesting family drama. Well done, but a bit claustrophobic with the weather and social atmosphere. I also found Hull's writing style a bit jarring. At times it seemed a bit stream of consciousness in a spacially disorienting way.
February 21, 2018
People whose opinion I respect have liked this book, and I was really eager to try it. It also had the advantage of being written by a Michigander. However, after plowing through 1/3 of it, I just had to give it up. I found the author's writing style to be what I would call awkward and the self-involved heroine annoyed me. Still, there were moments of beauty, evocative and lovely in a way that reminded me of days gone by in my Iowa childhood. What relaxed lives we lived then!
September 30, 2016
Helen Hull’s sixth novel, Heat Lightning, was first published in 1932, and has recently been reissued by Persephone. According to the publishing house’s magazine, The Persephone Biannually, the idea for Heat Lightning came to the author when she read the following sentence in a magazine article: ‘Here in America we stem from many races, we have no homogenous roots, no common traditions’. The preface to the volume has been provided by Patricia McClelland Miller, who states that Heat Lightning is ‘at its core, a novel of ideas’. Miller’s informative writing shows the psychology of the characters, particularly of the novel’s protagonist, Amy. She states the way in which Amy is presented with ‘a dilemma common to many of Helen Hull’s characters: how can women flourish when they are expected to make most of the adjustments in situations which really require the efforts of both men and women?’
The novel, set in 1930, begins with Amy Westover, a thirty five-year-old woman, who is returning to her Michigan hometown with ‘a small pyramid of luggage at her feet’. She spent her childhood in a fictional town named Flemington, which she has fled to once more to escape her unhappy marriage in New York. ‘They would all wonder why she had come,’ Hull writes, ‘where her husband Geoffrey was, – and the joke was that she didn’t know the answer’. Despite returning under the guise of resting after a tonsil operation, she admits to her grandmother in an early conversation, ‘Yes, I ran away, alone’. Amy is ‘too thin, too tense, head with dark fluff of hair strained forward… and the dark eyes gave back an anxious stare’. Throughout, memories of her past is woven in, and these come to light when particular senses are affected by what she sees and feels around her – for example, the smell of ‘hot vinegar and spices’ remind her of making pickles on hot summer mornings.
A list of principal characters has been provided at the outset, ranging from our protagonist and her immediate family members to Charley Johnson, Amy’s grandmother’s former chauffeur. This list provides a useful reference point, as a lot of individuals are introduced in a kind of barrage in just a few pages. Whilst we learn rather a lot about Amy as the novel progresses, she still feels like a somewhat distant protagonist. We as readers are her overseers, and we are distinctly not part of her story. We watch her and her actions with mild interest, but there is a kind of barrier which Hull has erected which stops us from becoming too involved or too compassionate towards Amy. The other characters, too, are either not developed enough, or come across as superficial or cruel. Amy’s grandmother, for example, is incredibly judgemental of those around her, and is never scared of giving her often crude and bigoted opinions: ‘Curly doesn’t approve of immigration… No more do I. Too many foreigners. Too many right in our own family’.
The novel deals with Amy’s struggle of how to behave in two entirely different places – one as a responsible wife and mother to the oddly named Buff and Bobs, and the other as a child herself to her parents, who are ‘so familiar, so foreign’. Amy says, when speaking about her tonsils, ‘They leave you melancholy when they go’, which could equally be a comment upon her children leaving for camp, or even metaphorically, with their growing up. She does seem to relax slightly when in her Michigan life, and one touching sentence describes the way in which ‘She took their good-night kisses, still their child’.
Hull’s descriptions of place and weather are the definite strength of the novel. The summer is ‘tucked in at the horizon inescapably’, and the heat of the day was ‘wavering, full of unsteady motes’. Later on, the sun lays ‘metallic fingers at the roots of her [Amy’s] hair’. The writing style is very rich, but the conversations often feel a little stolid. Rather than providing a comment upon life in small-town America, Heat Lightning focuses upon family dynamics, and the family unit as a whole. It also presents a small insight into a relatively early twentieth century marriage, saying of Amy and Geoffrey, ”This past year their attitude toward each other had been a tight-rope on which she struggled, with painful, awkward contortions, to keep her balance. And Geoffrey – he had jiggled the tight-rope’.
Heat Lightning is an important addition to the Persephone list in that it does deal with some growing issues which women faced in the early 1930s – for example, Amy’s disillusionment with her new life and her relationship with her husband, and her cousin Harriet’s lesbianism: ‘My cousin Harriet is awfully modern, isn’t she?’ The novel itself is well written, but the meandering storyline is difficult to engross oneself into, and the characters, even those we know the most about, are difficult to feel compassion for. A sense of momentum is never really gained, and the novel feels a little flat in consequence. It is worth reading for the writing style alone, but the characters are neither strong nor realistic enough to warrant as much love for this particular Persephone title as they are in almost all of the other books the firm publishes.
The novel, set in 1930, begins with Amy Westover, a thirty five-year-old woman, who is returning to her Michigan hometown with ‘a small pyramid of luggage at her feet’. She spent her childhood in a fictional town named Flemington, which she has fled to once more to escape her unhappy marriage in New York. ‘They would all wonder why she had come,’ Hull writes, ‘where her husband Geoffrey was, – and the joke was that she didn’t know the answer’. Despite returning under the guise of resting after a tonsil operation, she admits to her grandmother in an early conversation, ‘Yes, I ran away, alone’. Amy is ‘too thin, too tense, head with dark fluff of hair strained forward… and the dark eyes gave back an anxious stare’. Throughout, memories of her past is woven in, and these come to light when particular senses are affected by what she sees and feels around her – for example, the smell of ‘hot vinegar and spices’ remind her of making pickles on hot summer mornings.
A list of principal characters has been provided at the outset, ranging from our protagonist and her immediate family members to Charley Johnson, Amy’s grandmother’s former chauffeur. This list provides a useful reference point, as a lot of individuals are introduced in a kind of barrage in just a few pages. Whilst we learn rather a lot about Amy as the novel progresses, she still feels like a somewhat distant protagonist. We as readers are her overseers, and we are distinctly not part of her story. We watch her and her actions with mild interest, but there is a kind of barrier which Hull has erected which stops us from becoming too involved or too compassionate towards Amy. The other characters, too, are either not developed enough, or come across as superficial or cruel. Amy’s grandmother, for example, is incredibly judgemental of those around her, and is never scared of giving her often crude and bigoted opinions: ‘Curly doesn’t approve of immigration… No more do I. Too many foreigners. Too many right in our own family’.
The novel deals with Amy’s struggle of how to behave in two entirely different places – one as a responsible wife and mother to the oddly named Buff and Bobs, and the other as a child herself to her parents, who are ‘so familiar, so foreign’. Amy says, when speaking about her tonsils, ‘They leave you melancholy when they go’, which could equally be a comment upon her children leaving for camp, or even metaphorically, with their growing up. She does seem to relax slightly when in her Michigan life, and one touching sentence describes the way in which ‘She took their good-night kisses, still their child’.
Hull’s descriptions of place and weather are the definite strength of the novel. The summer is ‘tucked in at the horizon inescapably’, and the heat of the day was ‘wavering, full of unsteady motes’. Later on, the sun lays ‘metallic fingers at the roots of her [Amy’s] hair’. The writing style is very rich, but the conversations often feel a little stolid. Rather than providing a comment upon life in small-town America, Heat Lightning focuses upon family dynamics, and the family unit as a whole. It also presents a small insight into a relatively early twentieth century marriage, saying of Amy and Geoffrey, ”This past year their attitude toward each other had been a tight-rope on which she struggled, with painful, awkward contortions, to keep her balance. And Geoffrey – he had jiggled the tight-rope’.
Heat Lightning is an important addition to the Persephone list in that it does deal with some growing issues which women faced in the early 1930s – for example, Amy’s disillusionment with her new life and her relationship with her husband, and her cousin Harriet’s lesbianism: ‘My cousin Harriet is awfully modern, isn’t she?’ The novel itself is well written, but the meandering storyline is difficult to engross oneself into, and the characters, even those we know the most about, are difficult to feel compassion for. A sense of momentum is never really gained, and the novel feels a little flat in consequence. It is worth reading for the writing style alone, but the characters are neither strong nor realistic enough to warrant as much love for this particular Persephone title as they are in almost all of the other books the firm publishes.
March 18, 2018
I loved the characters and the problems they faced, the 1930 small town setting, and could feel and smell the sultry atmosphere. It was a bit too talky in parts and the weakest part was Amy's problem with her marriage which wasn't really made very clear. I wonder what Hull's other novels are like.
April 29, 2016
"Her name was Amy and she was sensible"- (c) Amy Cook re: Amy in Heat Lightning (and probably re: Amy Cook)
August 27, 2024
"But she was a shore from which the tide receded, in spite of soft reaches of sleep waves, and presently she knew, reluctantly, that she was awake, a shore exposed to wind and sun."
This happened to be a Persephone book that just so happened to find me at the right time, when I too had returned home at a pivotal life moment and become absorbed into the domestic routines of my childhood home in the midst of a hot, hot summer. It's rare that I don't enjoy a Persephone book, but this was truly exceptional.
Above all, Hull's writing is just absolutely exquisite. There are so many incredible lines in this book, so casually tucked between bits of dialogue, and magnified by figurative language so rich that I often found myself retreating to reread even the shortest of phrases in awe of their vividity.
I also enjoyed the domestic detail Hull packs, a real Persephone hallmark, from the peach canning in the opening chapters to the laundry day routine that backgrounds Amy's final day at home. They lend such a rich sense of reality to this story and these characters, enhancing the family drama that plays out over the course of the novel.
Due to travel plans and the weight limit on my suitcase, I did end up taking a 2-week break from this with less than 100 pages to go, but that honestly only solidified my love for this book, as over that period, I found myself constantly thinking about this story and these characters and could not wait to get back and see how it all ended.
This has definitely risen to become one of my top favorite Persephones — it is so simple, yet so charming and emotional, and beautifully, beautifully written. I highly reccommend.
September 8, 2018
Fascinating exploration of protagonist’s internal world running alongside her observations and assessments of her family and friends. Set in the time of the start of the Great Depression interesting to watch the characters’ lives unfolding in this context. There’s a sense of the old world traditions slowly eroding away in the face of new ideas and morals.
September 19, 2013
Another winner from Persephone Classics! This forgotten treasure was my second favorite read of the summer. Helen Hull was a popular American author during the first half of the 20th century, but her work is largely ignored today. This is a shame, because the themes she explored in this novel, along with her exquisite prose, made this an absolute joy to read. The basic story revolves around a young woman who lives in New York City and has returned to rural-ish Michigan to visit her family at the cusp of the Depression. In this aspect, the book actually brought to mind a mash-up of Faulkner and Wharton. There were the weird antics of her unusual family members (like Faulkner), but the book is written in the accessible, old-fashioned, American family style of Wharton. To this day, I can't cut up a peach without remembering the grandmother in this book.
May 20, 2013
I can see why many people wouldn't necessarily be drawn to this book. It's small, introspective and a little old fashion given when it was written. But I loved it. As a mother I appreciated the protagonist's POV. I loved her take on motherhood. And, everyone's family is a little crazy right? This is a quiet book about going home to your parents when your life as an adult is not longer the black and white of your childhood. They say you can't go home again, but there is a sort of peace that you acquire when you embrace your roots. If you're looking for big action, or twisty plot lines, this isn't the book for you. But if you like a book to fall into and walk around inside of instead of burning through, you should read.
December 17, 2022
Amy Norton is conflicted about marriage, motherhood and her work, and seeks to escape both her problems and the stifling heat by returning to the safe and comforting stability of her childhood home. When she arrives, she discovers that she has brought both her problems and the heat with her, and also realises that her family is also going through a period of change.
Hull writes very well - she is excellent at evoking a sense of place and also at creating very real characters. Amy's mother, Catherine, 'betrayed herself so rarely; she offered you the quiet decorum of her visible hours' while the more clinging and controlling Aunt Lora was 'a limp, unhappy, maternal octopus'. I also found this novel conveyed a very strong sense of the oppressive heat and the longing for the arrival of cool rain, which brilliantly mirrors the growing awareness of family pressures which also need relief.
I felt the main weakness of the novel was the reason for Amy's journey. She does not come across as an unstable character or one prone to melodramatic behaviour, yet we are never really given a satisfactory reason for her flight. Her 'marital' problems are presented as being serious enough that she is considering never returning to her husband Geoffrey, yet they seemed to evaporate into nothingness after a few days away from him. I felt the novel would have been much stronger if she had simply come home to recuperate from an operation (the reason she presents to her parents) - the reflections on her own marriage and motherhood would have grown more naturally out of a quiet few days spent observing her family's interactions than out of the vague, unspecified 'trouble' she is having.
The other issue I had with the novel is the way in which other ethnicities, servants and those with learning difficulties are spoken of and sometimes to (even Catherine Westover, the nicest character in the book, refers to 'dirty foreigners), and also, the way in which husbands having affairs is seen as normal as long as they provide for any illegitimate children. However, while finding these views objectionable, it is important to remember that they would be considered as normal and acceptable for the times in which Hull was writing.
Hull writes very well - she is excellent at evoking a sense of place and also at creating very real characters. Amy's mother, Catherine, 'betrayed herself so rarely; she offered you the quiet decorum of her visible hours' while the more clinging and controlling Aunt Lora was 'a limp, unhappy, maternal octopus'. I also found this novel conveyed a very strong sense of the oppressive heat and the longing for the arrival of cool rain, which brilliantly mirrors the growing awareness of family pressures which also need relief.
I felt the main weakness of the novel was the reason for Amy's journey. She does not come across as an unstable character or one prone to melodramatic behaviour, yet we are never really given a satisfactory reason for her flight. Her 'marital' problems are presented as being serious enough that she is considering never returning to her husband Geoffrey, yet they seemed to evaporate into nothingness after a few days away from him. I felt the novel would have been much stronger if she had simply come home to recuperate from an operation (the reason she presents to her parents) - the reflections on her own marriage and motherhood would have grown more naturally out of a quiet few days spent observing her family's interactions than out of the vague, unspecified 'trouble' she is having.
The other issue I had with the novel is the way in which other ethnicities, servants and those with learning difficulties are spoken of and sometimes to (even Catherine Westover, the nicest character in the book, refers to 'dirty foreigners), and also, the way in which husbands having affairs is seen as normal as long as they provide for any illegitimate children. However, while finding these views objectionable, it is important to remember that they would be considered as normal and acceptable for the times in which Hull was writing.
January 3, 2020
1/3/20: so many thoughts about this book! where to begin! This is a quietly dramatic book, where dramatic things happen (illegitimate children, family inheritance squabbles, infidelity) but where the drama turns not on the luridness of the things themselves but on the tiny details and emotions that underpin them: the resentments between family members, the things people should have said and didn't (or shouldn't have said and did), the moments glimpsed by others and the burden of action those glimpses create. It's also a very Midwestern book, where banal conversations necessarily become conduits for deeper and fraught emotional exchanges, and where entire relationships turn on slight, almost imperceptible, changes in tone and wording.
Mostly, though (as the excellent preface in the Persephone Books edition notes) Heat Lighting is about the difficulty of figuring out how to live your life decently and rightly—to figure out, as the protagonist, Amy Norton, notes in the book's early chapters, what your code is. All of this is set against modern life and its increasing isolation and precarity (which makes it an interesting book to read in 2020), which places this immense burden onto solitary individuals.
"She had thought she knew so much about love, in a modern, sophisticated knowledge that the first absorption must lessen, that passion must lose its intensity. She had known too much, and far too little. When you grew older, and a day wasn't a dazzling space of sun between two darknesses, then you should know your lover had his own dusty road to travel. What had Grandmother said?—a lifetime's too short to find your way about another's heart. And she, poor, stupid fool, hadn't tried." (page 297)
Mostly, though (as the excellent preface in the Persephone Books edition notes) Heat Lighting is about the difficulty of figuring out how to live your life decently and rightly—to figure out, as the protagonist, Amy Norton, notes in the book's early chapters, what your code is. All of this is set against modern life and its increasing isolation and precarity (which makes it an interesting book to read in 2020), which places this immense burden onto solitary individuals.
"She had thought she knew so much about love, in a modern, sophisticated knowledge that the first absorption must lessen, that passion must lose its intensity. She had known too much, and far too little. When you grew older, and a day wasn't a dazzling space of sun between two darknesses, then you should know your lover had his own dusty road to travel. What had Grandmother said?—a lifetime's too short to find your way about another's heart. And she, poor, stupid fool, hadn't tried." (page 297)
October 31, 2018
How could I resist buying this book in Persephone's London shop, when I saw it was by a Michigan author? Helen Hull was born in Albion, Mi, where my mom lived a short time as a child and where she taught school when a young women just qualified. Setting aside, I enjoyed Hull's observations, though she wasn't always as "modern" as I'd hope. What can you expect? She wrote this novel while traveling in Europe, mostly England, on a Guggenheim in 1931. It's set in the summer of 1930, just after the crash. Hull had left the midwest for NY, just like her main character Amy, who unlike Hull, is married with two children. The sultry summer trip home sees Amy escaping her marital problems only to find her childhood home and family sizzling with its own resentments--with more to come. I have not yet wrapped my mind around the resolution or "reckoning" but will in the days to come.
February 24, 2025
I picked this book up at a thrift store because it was old, and a flip-through revealed a lot of conversation. It's about two weeks in the midwestern Westover family, once the most important family in town, now in failing wealth. Daughter Amy visits from NYC, where she is married with children but is now separated from her husband.
Family drama, family secrets, nothing that hasn't been seen in any family dramas before. The difference to me was the writing. The author wrote almost poetic descriptions and the main character Amy is forever psychoanalyzing herself, her marriage, and each family member. It kept my interest but the ending was a big fizzle.
It was written in 1932 so expect a few racist tropes, and if you ever read it, give it about 100 pages because this family is huge and hard to keep straight. A family tree or cast of characters would have improved understanding.
Family drama, family secrets, nothing that hasn't been seen in any family dramas before. The difference to me was the writing. The author wrote almost poetic descriptions and the main character Amy is forever psychoanalyzing herself, her marriage, and each family member. It kept my interest but the ending was a big fizzle.
It was written in 1932 so expect a few racist tropes, and if you ever read it, give it about 100 pages because this family is huge and hard to keep straight. A family tree or cast of characters would have improved understanding.
July 5, 2020
It took me a little while to get into this tale of a well-to-do extended family in Michigan experiencing upheaval in the summer of 1930, but I'm really glad I persisted with it. The intra-family dramas are in some respects quite minor, but Hull makes it clear why none of it feels that way to those involved; perhaps the animosity (largely unspoken, for the sake of politeness) is all the more bitter because of the low stakes. Our protagonist Amy, usually resident in New York but briefly home for a visit, suppresses her feelings like a champ as she watches everything teeter on the brink of falling apart. It's not always subtle - Amy is much given to analysing the inter-personal dynamics for us - but insightful and often generous writing.
December 28, 2019
It took me a long time to get through Heat Lightning, and it is very admittedly not a very glamorous book. However, it offers a really interesting commentary on women’s roles and attitudes during the Great Depression (and beyond).
Each of the women’s lives felt like tightly wound rubber bands that were being twisted and twisted to an ever tenser breaking point—speeding toward an impending collapse.
This passage, spoken by Amy to her husband, captures a lot of feelings for me: “It was jealousy... of your being different. Able to escape so easily. Male.”
It’s still a big feeling.
Each of the women’s lives felt like tightly wound rubber bands that were being twisted and twisted to an ever tenser breaking point—speeding toward an impending collapse.
This passage, spoken by Amy to her husband, captures a lot of feelings for me: “It was jealousy... of your being different. Able to escape so easily. Male.”
It’s still a big feeling.
July 14, 2022
This book spoke to me in so many ways as an Indiana girl now living in the UK. Then Westovers reminded me of my own family so much it made me feel a bit homesick - from the matriarchal Grandmother, duty bound father and small town, intimate public dramas.
Helen Hull has an absolutely magical way of describing human emotion and the environment around them. Just a simple and beautiful look into everyday life in a 1930s Midwest family. Absolutely perfect summer read and I’m incredibly thankful to Persephone Books for bringing to the world once again!
Helen Hull has an absolutely magical way of describing human emotion and the environment around them. Just a simple and beautiful look into everyday life in a 1930s Midwest family. Absolutely perfect summer read and I’m incredibly thankful to Persephone Books for bringing to the world once again!
July 11, 2025
Why does this keep happening to me every time that I pick a book from Persephone that's not Marghanita Laski I don't enjoy it! I do have some other Perspehone's on my TBR so hopefully that will change soon.
I wanted to like this book, and in parts it had some interesting quotes and observations, but in the end it didn't grip me. It was like i was there reading it, but also not there as nothing went in.
I wanted to like this book, and in parts it had some interesting quotes and observations, but in the end it didn't grip me. It was like i was there reading it, but also not there as nothing went in.
March 21, 2018
A woman goes to her mom and dad's to figure out her life and family drama of a completely different type breaks out... written in 1932, before the depression deepened, it shows how far some put money above family on the cusp of greater worries.
Read
February 25, 2023maybe i'll pick it up again some other time. stopped reading at page 17
November 10, 2013
Was there a new code? What, at the very bottom of her heart, did she believe in? Did it differ, fundamentally, from her grandmother's set of values? Courage, love, loyalty. The scene shifted, but there were no new virtues. Who needed any new ones?
Amy has escaped vague marital problems in New York for the comforting environment of her childhood home in Michigan. Unfortunately for Amy, her visit home is not the relaxing escape she envisioned. As the heat bears down on the small Midwestern town, the family quietly implodes leaving Amy's poor father and mother (the most sensible of the bunch) to clean up the mess. Meanwhile, Amy tries to help smooth things over as best as she can, but she's wrestling with major issues of her own.
Amy is struggling with who she is and how to be: she is a married mother, but she is deeply unhappy and dissatisfied but not exactly sure why. She seeks guidance from her female relatives because she's sure if she just learns the right rules, she will know how to behave. She muses on people's responsibilities and duties to one another particularly when they conflict with one's secret life and responsibility to be true to oneself. She wonders about the shifting nature of self, how it changes depending on your role as parent, child, spouse, or sibling. Even as Amy struggles to understand herself and what is important to her, she sees clearly the nature of her assorted family members, which in turn helps her clarify her own feelings and beliefs.
This was really a lovely book and it was somewhat surprising but gratifying to see that not much has changed in terms of how we understand one another and ourselves since the book was written in 1932. Yes, there are some unpleasant antiquated bits: Italians are dismissed as a bunch of bootlegging immigrants; there isn't much understanding towards the mentally ill; the one lesbian in the novel is vindictive and unpleasant (though so are many other family members). But there were so many perfect little insights:
"A lifetime's too short to find your way about another's heart, without blunderings and mistakes. That's why these folks nowadays are so foolish, rushing into marriage, out of it, into another. They never do anything but make a beginning, and then make the same beginning again. They think there's nothing else, besides that crazy excitement at the first."
"It had been easier, she thought, to live when you knew exactly what you believed, what was right, what you and everyone else should do. But wasn't it ridiculous not to be sure where resentment should begin, not to know whether you were a selfish prig, or -- well, what? -- an injured woman?"
"You can't ever think out a person, coldly, separate from him, because you are different, yourself, when you are apart."
"Perhaps love always ran that course. You loved a man, you lived with him, tried to make a sort of life with him, and you ceased to look at him except as he affected you...You responded to inflections of voice, to overtones, in terms of your own desires and failures. And the man you loved became a sort of scapegoat for the difficulties not in love, but in the whole business of living."
I think the important point is that there isn't a set of rules for relationships; the essential thing is figuring out what works for you: the most admirable characters in the book (Amy's mother Catherine, Felice, Laurance, and even her grandmother) seemingly prioritize their spouses above their own needs and wants, but in the end, they remain truer to themselves than all the other characters in the novel and are ultimately happier.
Amy has escaped vague marital problems in New York for the comforting environment of her childhood home in Michigan. Unfortunately for Amy, her visit home is not the relaxing escape she envisioned. As the heat bears down on the small Midwestern town, the family quietly implodes leaving Amy's poor father and mother (the most sensible of the bunch) to clean up the mess. Meanwhile, Amy tries to help smooth things over as best as she can, but she's wrestling with major issues of her own.
Amy is struggling with who she is and how to be: she is a married mother, but she is deeply unhappy and dissatisfied but not exactly sure why. She seeks guidance from her female relatives because she's sure if she just learns the right rules, she will know how to behave. She muses on people's responsibilities and duties to one another particularly when they conflict with one's secret life and responsibility to be true to oneself. She wonders about the shifting nature of self, how it changes depending on your role as parent, child, spouse, or sibling. Even as Amy struggles to understand herself and what is important to her, she sees clearly the nature of her assorted family members, which in turn helps her clarify her own feelings and beliefs.
This was really a lovely book and it was somewhat surprising but gratifying to see that not much has changed in terms of how we understand one another and ourselves since the book was written in 1932. Yes, there are some unpleasant antiquated bits: Italians are dismissed as a bunch of bootlegging immigrants; there isn't much understanding towards the mentally ill; the one lesbian in the novel is vindictive and unpleasant (though so are many other family members). But there were so many perfect little insights:
"A lifetime's too short to find your way about another's heart, without blunderings and mistakes. That's why these folks nowadays are so foolish, rushing into marriage, out of it, into another. They never do anything but make a beginning, and then make the same beginning again. They think there's nothing else, besides that crazy excitement at the first."
"It had been easier, she thought, to live when you knew exactly what you believed, what was right, what you and everyone else should do. But wasn't it ridiculous not to be sure where resentment should begin, not to know whether you were a selfish prig, or -- well, what? -- an injured woman?"
"You can't ever think out a person, coldly, separate from him, because you are different, yourself, when you are apart."
"Perhaps love always ran that course. You loved a man, you lived with him, tried to make a sort of life with him, and you ceased to look at him except as he affected you...You responded to inflections of voice, to overtones, in terms of your own desires and failures. And the man you loved became a sort of scapegoat for the difficulties not in love, but in the whole business of living."
I think the important point is that there isn't a set of rules for relationships; the essential thing is figuring out what works for you: the most admirable characters in the book (Amy's mother Catherine, Felice, Laurance, and even her grandmother) seemingly prioritize their spouses above their own needs and wants, but in the end, they remain truer to themselves than all the other characters in the novel and are ultimately happier.
June 29, 2017
A thoughtful and astute observation of family, identity, love, marriage, betrayal, death... It is a shame that Hull has been forgotten by literary history and consigned to the long list of 'domestic' writers deemed irrelevant today. She writes about the simple, everyday dramas, petty jealousies, and delights of life in an engaging and unobtrusive style. This is a quiet book, but all the more powerful for that. It sags a little in the middle, but rewards the reader for persevering with some especially thought-provoking passages in the final third of the novel. I'd highly recommend it!
December 26, 2023
See my review here:
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2023...
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2023...
July 8, 2013
I'd give this 4.5 stars if it were an option. Author Helen Hull did a masterful job of evoking the feel of a quiet street in small-town America in the summer: you could practically feel the heavy muggy air, smell the flowers, hear the clink of ice cubes in tea. The family dynamics were intriguing and I loved the grandmother's character in particular (also loved the mother, and the grandma's loyal maid). The ending was slightly unsatisfying (I thought), hence the lack of a five-star rating, but overall it was an absorbing read and confirmed my adoration for Persephone Books and the fact that they bring these forgotten stories to new life.
May 19, 2016
I think I found out about this novel from Persephone Books. A wonderful, albeit dated story of a wealthy Michigan family in the 30s. Amy comes back to visit from NYC, not bringing her husband and children. When the grandmother dies suddenly, the true colors of the family are shown. Will Amy's husband be found on his "camping trip" in time for the funeral? Why was the grandmother's will recently destroyed. I would not recommend this for most readers, but I loved the story and the somewhat dated language.
November 19, 2013
A seemingly simple story about a woman who visits her hometown in Michigan for a week while she works through issues in her marriage. It shows how complicated family relationships can be with siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles when they all collide. Interesting that the only thing they have in common is blood. If not for that, they would most likely not have anything to do with each other. Full of powerful and insightful writing with truly complicated and interesting characters.
Read
March 19, 2013I sought this from the library because Persephone is about to republish it. At first I liked it very much, particularly its depiction of an adult visiting her family of origin (with all the provoking dynamics and regressive behavior that can entail), but at some point my interest waned, and it did not return.
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