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Heat Wave
In her most accomplished and appealing novel since the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, acclaimed author Penelope Lively tells an emotionally powerful, beautifully wrought story of love and marital infidelity through the eyes of a mother whose daughter's husband has strayed.
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 16, 1996
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5524 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Lively
127 books937 followersPenelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.
Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.
She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.
Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.
Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.
She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.
Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 326 reviews
July 31, 2019
My fourth Lively book, and the most enjoyable thus far. Pauline, a freelance copyeditor (“Putting commas into a novel about unicorns”) in her fifties, has escaped from London to spend a hot summer at World’s End, the Midlands holiday cottage complex she shares with her daughter Teresa, Teresa’s husband Maurice, and their baby son Luke. Maurice is writing a history of English tourism and regularly goes back to London for meetings or receives visits from his publishers, James and Carol. Pauline, divorced from a philandering husband, recognizes the signs of Maurice’s adultery long before Teresa does, and uneasily ponders how much to hint and how much to say outright.
The last line of the first chapter coyly promises an “agreeable summer of industry and companionship,” but the increasing atmospheric threats (drought or storms; combine harvesters coming ever nearer) match the tensions in the household. I expected this to be one of those subtle relationship studies where ultimately nothing happens. That’s not the case, though; if you’ve been paying good attention to the foreshadowing you’ll see that the ending has been on the cards.
I loved the city versus country setup of the novel, especially the almost Van Gogh-like descriptions of the blue sky and the golden wheat, and recognized myself in Pauline’s freelancer routines. Her friendships with bookseller Hugh and her client, novelist Chris Rogers, might be inconsequential to the plot but give Pauline a life wider than the confines of the cottage, and the frequent flashbacks to her marriage to Harry show what she had to overcome to earn a life of her own.
This was a compulsive read that was perfect for the hottest week of our English summer. I’d recommend it to fans of Tessa Hadley, Susan Hill and Polly Sansom.
The last line of the first chapter coyly promises an “agreeable summer of industry and companionship,” but the increasing atmospheric threats (drought or storms; combine harvesters coming ever nearer) match the tensions in the household. I expected this to be one of those subtle relationship studies where ultimately nothing happens. That’s not the case, though; if you’ve been paying good attention to the foreshadowing you’ll see that the ending has been on the cards.
I loved the city versus country setup of the novel, especially the almost Van Gogh-like descriptions of the blue sky and the golden wheat, and recognized myself in Pauline’s freelancer routines. Her friendships with bookseller Hugh and her client, novelist Chris Rogers, might be inconsequential to the plot but give Pauline a life wider than the confines of the cottage, and the frequent flashbacks to her marriage to Harry show what she had to overcome to earn a life of her own.
This was a compulsive read that was perfect for the hottest week of our English summer. I’d recommend it to fans of Tessa Hadley, Susan Hill and Polly Sansom.
July 16, 2024
When I started this book, I couldn't imagine that this would be a mother-daughter book, deeply emotional and from my heart. I felt for this book.
This is a story of a grown woman, Pauline, living near her daughter out of London during the summer. Her daughter is married and has a toddler. Throughout the book, Pauline "time travels" back to her early motherhood and remembers her being where her daughter is right now. Teresa is living the emotional turmoil Pauline did when she was in the same situation years ago.
Pauline is not deeply emotional with her daughter, and that is a trauma of her own relationship with her mother. Pauline is not biased by her own life experience when it comes to her daughter's life. Or maybe she is, I am still thinking about it. It's always like this - the next generation trying to be better than the previous, being a better parent. And it's always like this, when you discuss any emotional difficulties with strangers better than with relatives - your own or theirs. Well, you are not emotionally involved, they are not part of your pain, you won't let them in. There is this other character, not at all in the story, another man, living by far away from Pauline, whom Pauline doesn't know, it's a work-related relationship. Pauline somehow gets to discuss this man's family matters and emotionally support this stranger, even though she hesitates to discuss anything with her daughter.
The story shouts out about feminism and women. It's one of the womanly books I've ever read.
The narrative is a powerful mosaic of female experiences, struggles, and triumphs in marriage and family. It's a story of about 4 generations and their emotional connections. It highlights the strength and resilience of women in the face of life. Because life happens whether you want it or not. Men in the story have no significance, just there, creating some circumstances women have to figure out and outlive. Men are just there, just living by.
I've never read a book for a while that resonated with me in so many levels. It was the best book for the "present" me. And Pauline is a woman I would grow up to be in my 50s and trying to do in my 30s. I felt for the calm and slow life she has now as a grown woman, not hurrying anywhere.
I loved, loved, loved how Penelope Lively describes everything as is - simple. But you have all the emotions between the lines. Because you are a woman, you've been there, you know what it feels like. Her writing is honest. The honesty is painful, but at the same time shockingly alluring.
P.S. It took me a while to write this review, and thank goodness I wrote my ideas on post-its while reading. Otherwise, I would have forgotten my impressions.
This is a story of a grown woman, Pauline, living near her daughter out of London during the summer. Her daughter is married and has a toddler. Throughout the book, Pauline "time travels" back to her early motherhood and remembers her being where her daughter is right now. Teresa is living the emotional turmoil Pauline did when she was in the same situation years ago.
Pauline is not deeply emotional with her daughter, and that is a trauma of her own relationship with her mother. Pauline is not biased by her own life experience when it comes to her daughter's life. Or maybe she is, I am still thinking about it. It's always like this - the next generation trying to be better than the previous, being a better parent. And it's always like this, when you discuss any emotional difficulties with strangers better than with relatives - your own or theirs. Well, you are not emotionally involved, they are not part of your pain, you won't let them in. There is this other character, not at all in the story, another man, living by far away from Pauline, whom Pauline doesn't know, it's a work-related relationship. Pauline somehow gets to discuss this man's family matters and emotionally support this stranger, even though she hesitates to discuss anything with her daughter.
The story shouts out about feminism and women. It's one of the womanly books I've ever read.
The narrative is a powerful mosaic of female experiences, struggles, and triumphs in marriage and family. It's a story of about 4 generations and their emotional connections. It highlights the strength and resilience of women in the face of life. Because life happens whether you want it or not. Men in the story have no significance, just there, creating some circumstances women have to figure out and outlive. Men are just there, just living by.
I've never read a book for a while that resonated with me in so many levels. It was the best book for the "present" me. And Pauline is a woman I would grow up to be in my 50s and trying to do in my 30s. I felt for the calm and slow life she has now as a grown woman, not hurrying anywhere.
I loved, loved, loved how Penelope Lively describes everything as is - simple. But you have all the emotions between the lines. Because you are a woman, you've been there, you know what it feels like. Her writing is honest. The honesty is painful, but at the same time shockingly alluring.
P.S. It took me a while to write this review, and thank goodness I wrote my ideas on post-its while reading. Otherwise, I would have forgotten my impressions.
February 14, 2012
There are lots of authors who I really enjoy who get me happily from one end of a book to the other, with all kinds of interesting plots, characters and relationships, but who never write a really memorable sentence that makes me sit back and think. Penelope Lively is not one of those authors. Her plots are great (usually) small scale dramas, the characters fabulous and the relationships very interesting, but on every page there are a handful of sentences you want to cut out and keep forever. Wonderful stuff!
September 2, 2022
Who did this to you, Penelope? You are sitting on a wounded heart that groans like a mountain and it pervades this pile of pages. Does your autobiography tell the story or have you kept mum about him?
I am neither a mother, nor semi-retired and living in the English countryside, but I was moved in ways I wouldn't have predicted. Nipped just in time before the autumn chill sweeps away the summer.
I am neither a mother, nor semi-retired and living in the English countryside, but I was moved in ways I wouldn't have predicted. Nipped just in time before the autumn chill sweeps away the summer.
October 6, 2013
The question is often asked ' Do you remember where you were when JFK was shot ?'...well probably in the midst of being breast fed by my mum if you're interested but I think a question could also be asked of the sun-starved british. ' Do you remember the heat waves of 1976, 1983 etc. We get so little that it remains burnt, if you'll pardon the pun, in the memory.
This novel is all about an unspecified summer in which memory and past experience intermingle with the oppressively hot present. The main protagonist, having experienced the continuous infidelity 25 or so years previously of the husband in whom she had invested all her love and adoration to the point of obsession, now sees exactly the same history repeating itself in the relationship of her daughter and husband.
Alongside these two histories which echo and reflect the misery and harrowing misplaced guilt and suffering of the two women involved we have, unusually, associative plotlines of two good men and the struggles of their relationships. One a close friend who faithfully supports and protects a long term mentally unstable wife and the other a work colleague the wife of whom leaves him and their children. Although as we only hear his side of the discussion on a phone, we cannot be sure of the facts.
The questions raised though are understated but there. What is love? What constitutes fidelity ? Does the ' its just me I can't help it ' stance have any kind of justification and when does enough constitute enough ?
All this confusion and angst and frustration bubbles alongside the heat and dryness which drains and deadens all life from the environment. Lively uses the fields and crops within them as markers of the downward spiral of Teresa, the daugther and of the growing anger of Pauline, the mother, who sees reflected in her daughter's grief and growing lack of confidence her past struggles.
The descriptive passages are simple but lovely. The descriptions of jealousy and the paralysing inability to move forward is painted brilliantly; the charming little punctuation marks that Teresa's toddler Luke performs in the narrative are just that, charming and a welcome easing of the tension.
The use of the images of poppies and wild flowers shining out even in amidst what seems dead; the questions of what is real nature and what is man-made, when does the countryside tip over into an artificial construct ? I could go on because this novel is packed with good things even in the midst of the evidently glowering misery which looms heavier and heavier over the plot and the reader until all comes to a head in a slightly obvious breaking of the tension with the almighty storm of storms right above the farmhouse in which most of the action has taken place.
The ending might be a little predictable, certainly clues littered the story but it wass nonetheless satisfying for that. Good book. Well worth reading
Excuse the relaunch but someone very kindly liked it which made me look at it again and I saw that back in 2011 I appeared to have a REALLY serious distaste for paragraphing
This novel is all about an unspecified summer in which memory and past experience intermingle with the oppressively hot present. The main protagonist, having experienced the continuous infidelity 25 or so years previously of the husband in whom she had invested all her love and adoration to the point of obsession, now sees exactly the same history repeating itself in the relationship of her daughter and husband.
Alongside these two histories which echo and reflect the misery and harrowing misplaced guilt and suffering of the two women involved we have, unusually, associative plotlines of two good men and the struggles of their relationships. One a close friend who faithfully supports and protects a long term mentally unstable wife and the other a work colleague the wife of whom leaves him and their children. Although as we only hear his side of the discussion on a phone, we cannot be sure of the facts.
The questions raised though are understated but there. What is love? What constitutes fidelity ? Does the ' its just me I can't help it ' stance have any kind of justification and when does enough constitute enough ?
All this confusion and angst and frustration bubbles alongside the heat and dryness which drains and deadens all life from the environment. Lively uses the fields and crops within them as markers of the downward spiral of Teresa, the daugther and of the growing anger of Pauline, the mother, who sees reflected in her daughter's grief and growing lack of confidence her past struggles.
The descriptive passages are simple but lovely. The descriptions of jealousy and the paralysing inability to move forward is painted brilliantly; the charming little punctuation marks that Teresa's toddler Luke performs in the narrative are just that, charming and a welcome easing of the tension.
The use of the images of poppies and wild flowers shining out even in amidst what seems dead; the questions of what is real nature and what is man-made, when does the countryside tip over into an artificial construct ? I could go on because this novel is packed with good things even in the midst of the evidently glowering misery which looms heavier and heavier over the plot and the reader until all comes to a head in a slightly obvious breaking of the tension with the almighty storm of storms right above the farmhouse in which most of the action has taken place.
The ending might be a little predictable, certainly clues littered the story but it wass nonetheless satisfying for that. Good book. Well worth reading
Excuse the relaunch but someone very kindly liked it which made me look at it again and I saw that back in 2011 I appeared to have a REALLY serious distaste for paragraphing
January 14, 2025
That ending?!?!?? Oh my god I did not see that coming I had to put the book down. The writing is absolutely beautiful. I loved the way it was written and I loved how you knew what was going on w/ out it being outright said of that makes sense. I loved Pauline in the end, she bothered me sometimes but it made her the perfect narrator. The mother-daughter parallels were just perfectly explained without explaining too much. I did really really love it. Highly recommend!!!
August 20, 2022
This is a book all about relationships and I truly enjoyed it for the quality of the writing and the fact that I could truly relate to the characters. The relationship between Pauline and her daughter Teresa seemed very familiar to me. Pauline seems to side with Teresa's husband and feels that Teresa is responsible for anything that might not be right in their marriage. She also seems to want to avoid any unpleasantness and lives in a sort of self-made oblivion.
Penelope Lively writes that Pauline "knew of [marital adultery] as a theme of fiction and of drama. She read library books and went occasionally to a film, but didn't see it as applicable to real life and least of all to her immediate world. The notion of her own husband consorting with another woman was inconceivable. His infidelities were with the golf club, the Sunday newspapers and the [cricket] test match on the radio."
I love that Lively uses the wheat to show us the passing of time and this passage especially resonated with respect to what we recall so easily and what seems to slip beyond our grasp, possibly due to its mundanity. Just the other day, I was looking at some particularly beautiful variegated tall grass (about 3 feet high) on my daily walk and I could not recollect for the life of me what it looked like in the spring, before it grew so tall and lovely.
"From time to time she looks out of the window across the track at the wheat which is changing color by the day. She remembers the green rash of early spring which was succeeded by thick pelt but cannot now see them in her head and thinks again how odd it is that some things hang there indestructible. Harry's face and voice on a street corner, the feel of his hand on her arm. But the ordinary processes of change are so hard to recover. What did that hedge look like in May? Why does language hang there in the mind, a voice, a sequence of words but she cannot now summon up the cuckoo."
I love this passage also, having stood still in a field of wheat of a windy day and enjoyed the sound of the 'sea' myself. "There is a day of such sledgehammer heat that no-one ventures outside and something curious happens to the wheat. It seem to hiss. Pauline keeps all her windows open and through them comes this sound as of some furtively restlessly sounding sea."
The description of how a toddler explores his world with such an intense but short attention span seemed very apt also: "Everything matters with desperate intensity but nothing continues to matter."
Then, after breezing in and announcing his presence with verve and enthusiasm, Harry leaves and "it is as though a destructing gust of wind has blown through the room. Everything is still and quiet once more." I had to chuckle, I know people that have this effect on a room full of people.
Another phrase that I found delightful is the description of someone being "agreeably blurred with wine."
This book is wonderfully read by Davina Porter, one of my favorite narrators.
Penelope Lively writes that Pauline "knew of [marital adultery] as a theme of fiction and of drama. She read library books and went occasionally to a film, but didn't see it as applicable to real life and least of all to her immediate world. The notion of her own husband consorting with another woman was inconceivable. His infidelities were with the golf club, the Sunday newspapers and the [cricket] test match on the radio."
I love that Lively uses the wheat to show us the passing of time and this passage especially resonated with respect to what we recall so easily and what seems to slip beyond our grasp, possibly due to its mundanity. Just the other day, I was looking at some particularly beautiful variegated tall grass (about 3 feet high) on my daily walk and I could not recollect for the life of me what it looked like in the spring, before it grew so tall and lovely.
"From time to time she looks out of the window across the track at the wheat which is changing color by the day. She remembers the green rash of early spring which was succeeded by thick pelt but cannot now see them in her head and thinks again how odd it is that some things hang there indestructible. Harry's face and voice on a street corner, the feel of his hand on her arm. But the ordinary processes of change are so hard to recover. What did that hedge look like in May? Why does language hang there in the mind, a voice, a sequence of words but she cannot now summon up the cuckoo."
I love this passage also, having stood still in a field of wheat of a windy day and enjoyed the sound of the 'sea' myself. "There is a day of such sledgehammer heat that no-one ventures outside and something curious happens to the wheat. It seem to hiss. Pauline keeps all her windows open and through them comes this sound as of some furtively restlessly sounding sea."
The description of how a toddler explores his world with such an intense but short attention span seemed very apt also: "Everything matters with desperate intensity but nothing continues to matter."
Then, after breezing in and announcing his presence with verve and enthusiasm, Harry leaves and "it is as though a destructing gust of wind has blown through the room. Everything is still and quiet once more." I had to chuckle, I know people that have this effect on a room full of people.
Another phrase that I found delightful is the description of someone being "agreeably blurred with wine."
This book is wonderfully read by Davina Porter, one of my favorite narrators.
June 7, 2021
This was my second Penelope Lively novel and I loved it as much as my first, Moon Tiger. This is a more contained novel, about the relationships between a middle aged mother and her grown up daughter (and young mother now herself) and son-in-law. Over the course of a summer's heatwave living in close proximity to each other in the countryside, the mother, Pauline, notices the old familir signs of infidelity she experienced herself as a wife in the behaviour of her son-in-law, Maurice, towards a woman who, with her partner, is a frequent guest.
Through her intermittent memories we get a vivid picture of what it was like for Pauline as a younger woman to experience infidelity - the initial denial, the slow reluctant realisation, the intense visceral jealousy, the 'remission,' when she believed all would be well, and the constant re-offending. What she discovered after she finally left her husband was that it was possible to survive without him and to make a full recovery. What she regrets is the years she lost to her pain.
What she doesn't regret is the daughter, Teresa, they had together. But now, she must witness her own daughter going through the same pain. And there is nothing she can do to help her. She watches Teresa tend unselfishly to the needs of her fifeen month old son, and recognises how, as a mother, you work day and night to prevent anything harming your child only, when they grow up, to find yourself in the position of having to stand by as disaster finally finds its way through to them.
This is a deeply revealing story about what 'philandering' men do to women. How women are caught in a trap by motherhood and domesticity and the trusting love they've been conditioned to expect, and how such men barely perceive, or allow themselves to perceive, the terrible pain they cause. Their only excuse, once they are finally caught out and can pretend no more that it's the woman being 'possessive' or 'paranoid' is to say, these things happen and it couldn't be helped.
I felt the novel was beautifully realised and beautifully nuanced. The themes are deftly interwoven, exploring infidelity and motherhood alongside the mythologising of the rural idyll and the act of writing itself, both so-called non-fiction (Maurice's enterprise) and fiction (a romantic adventure Pauline is in the process of copy editing).
Her protrayal of Maurice is devastating, unflinching and unforgiving and it felt to me like a huge relief and a breath of fresh air to have this man so mercilessly pinned down and displayed in all his charming grotesqueness.
I also loved her portrayal of the relationship between mother and daughter and how the mother still steps in to do all she can, whilst not speaking directly to her daughter about the situation in order to preserve her dignity, until it becomes impossible not to speak of it.
My only gripe was with the ending. Such a nuanced and truthful book seemed to deserve a believable ending which, as far as I could see, had to terminate in a state of irresolution. There needed not to be an easy answer. But one is given, which I found disappointing. I'll say no more on that for fear of spoiling it.
How I've managed to reach this point in my life, having read so much, without having read Penelope Lively I really don't know. I guess if she were a man, I might have known about her and got to her sooner. But she's gone right up there to the top of my favourite authors list. Wonderful.
Through her intermittent memories we get a vivid picture of what it was like for Pauline as a younger woman to experience infidelity - the initial denial, the slow reluctant realisation, the intense visceral jealousy, the 'remission,' when she believed all would be well, and the constant re-offending. What she discovered after she finally left her husband was that it was possible to survive without him and to make a full recovery. What she regrets is the years she lost to her pain.
What she doesn't regret is the daughter, Teresa, they had together. But now, she must witness her own daughter going through the same pain. And there is nothing she can do to help her. She watches Teresa tend unselfishly to the needs of her fifeen month old son, and recognises how, as a mother, you work day and night to prevent anything harming your child only, when they grow up, to find yourself in the position of having to stand by as disaster finally finds its way through to them.
This is a deeply revealing story about what 'philandering' men do to women. How women are caught in a trap by motherhood and domesticity and the trusting love they've been conditioned to expect, and how such men barely perceive, or allow themselves to perceive, the terrible pain they cause. Their only excuse, once they are finally caught out and can pretend no more that it's the woman being 'possessive' or 'paranoid' is to say, these things happen and it couldn't be helped.
I felt the novel was beautifully realised and beautifully nuanced. The themes are deftly interwoven, exploring infidelity and motherhood alongside the mythologising of the rural idyll and the act of writing itself, both so-called non-fiction (Maurice's enterprise) and fiction (a romantic adventure Pauline is in the process of copy editing).
Her protrayal of Maurice is devastating, unflinching and unforgiving and it felt to me like a huge relief and a breath of fresh air to have this man so mercilessly pinned down and displayed in all his charming grotesqueness.
I also loved her portrayal of the relationship between mother and daughter and how the mother still steps in to do all she can, whilst not speaking directly to her daughter about the situation in order to preserve her dignity, until it becomes impossible not to speak of it.
My only gripe was with the ending. Such a nuanced and truthful book seemed to deserve a believable ending which, as far as I could see, had to terminate in a state of irresolution. There needed not to be an easy answer. But one is given, which I found disappointing. I'll say no more on that for fear of spoiling it.
How I've managed to reach this point in my life, having read so much, without having read Penelope Lively I really don't know. I guess if she were a man, I might have known about her and got to her sooner. But she's gone right up there to the top of my favourite authors list. Wonderful.
December 22, 2009
A masterfully written book. One of my all time favorites. I have turned to this book time and time again for a lesson on subtle writing.
July 24, 2017
I think this is my 3rd Penelope Lively novel (nope it's my 4th!). I'm happy to say I won't run out of material by her any time soon for I have many more to go. This one is about all types of love: parental, husband & wife, friendships, and last but not least, illicit. As in the other two novels, this story layers past and present, seamlessly melting* time. I love that about her writing.
*Wink wink. As the title suggests, this one takes place in a HOT English summer. Perfect for a July read.
*Wink wink. As the title suggests, this one takes place in a HOT English summer. Perfect for a July read.
April 18, 2019
I really did not like this book at all. It moves incredibly slowly and I would find myself putting it down for days without any interest in picking it back up. This book is about a mother, Pauline, who watches her daughter’s husband have an affair and this takes her back in time to the collapse of her own marriage for the same reason. Every page or two we were drifting back in time through Pauline’s mundane thoughts, it was just too descriptive and unnecessary.
I did not find Pauline to be very personable at all, she had an aristocratic air about her and I felt that she was much too meddlesome in her daughter’s marriage, perhaps acquiring another hobby would have been good for her (eyeroll). Her constant analysis over every single miniscule observation of words, body language and glances exchanged was extremely tiresome.
I did not find Pauline to be very personable at all, she had an aristocratic air about her and I felt that she was much too meddlesome in her daughter’s marriage, perhaps acquiring another hobby would have been good for her (eyeroll). Her constant analysis over every single miniscule observation of words, body language and glances exchanged was extremely tiresome.
May 5, 2020
I bought a copy of this novel last year, attracted by the striking artwork on the front cover and the promise of a perceptive portrayal of ‘a fragile family, damaged and defined by adultery’. Fortunately, the book itself very much lives up to this impression, unfolding over a dry, claustrophobic summer underscored with a developing sense of tension.
Fifty-five-year-old Pauline – a freelance editor – is spending the summer at World’s End, her cottage in the English countryside. Residing in the adjacent cottage are Pauline’s daughter, Teresa, Teresa’s husband, Maurice, and their baby, Luke. Ostensibly, the family is there to enable Maurice – a writer of some promise – to complete his book on the history of tourism, a topic on which he holds fervent views.
At twenty-nine, Teresa is some fifteen years younger than Maurice, whom she loves very much. As Pauline looks on, she is reminded of the time when she was newly married to Teresa’s father, Harry, a rising star in academia back then, in demand both at home and abroad. While Pauline stayed at home to care for Teresa, Harry was free to play the field with various students, chalking up a string of affairs over the early years of their marriage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Harry denied any suggestion of infidelity when first confronted, casting Pauline as the overly suspicious accuser while reminding her of his need to circulate for work.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
Fifty-five-year-old Pauline – a freelance editor – is spending the summer at World’s End, her cottage in the English countryside. Residing in the adjacent cottage are Pauline’s daughter, Teresa, Teresa’s husband, Maurice, and their baby, Luke. Ostensibly, the family is there to enable Maurice – a writer of some promise – to complete his book on the history of tourism, a topic on which he holds fervent views.
At twenty-nine, Teresa is some fifteen years younger than Maurice, whom she loves very much. As Pauline looks on, she is reminded of the time when she was newly married to Teresa’s father, Harry, a rising star in academia back then, in demand both at home and abroad. While Pauline stayed at home to care for Teresa, Harry was free to play the field with various students, chalking up a string of affairs over the early years of their marriage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Harry denied any suggestion of infidelity when first confronted, casting Pauline as the overly suspicious accuser while reminding her of his need to circulate for work.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
June 29, 2018
3.5 stars. Ironically felt somewhat lukewarm towards this one at first. I think this is definitely a book intended to be read during the course of one hot day, rather than in fits and starts as I approached it. After the initial perseverance needed, I was soon aptly rapt by the stifling simmering tension and depth of emotion portrayed by the characters. A worthy way to spend a summers day.
February 25, 2025
Summer in a cottage with family. What can possibly go wrong?
In Heat Wave, Penelope Lively takes an interesting idea and elevates it with her wise, witty and wonderful prose. The protagonist Pauline is a copy editor living in a cottage in the countryside, and she is visited by her daughter Teresa, son-in-law Maurice and grandson Luke. Maurice is a writer of increasing popularity who aims to complete his new book over the summer, for which he takes several day trips to the tourist attractions in the countryside.
Pauline appears initially as an emotionally distant and detached character, but flashes of her past establish the kind of person she is and lay bare the scars from her unsuccessful marriage in which her ex-husband continuously cheated on her. She recognizes a younger version of herself in Teresa who is head-over-heels in love with her new husband who's 15 years older than her. She senses that Maurice is an infidel and having an affair with Carol, the girlfriend of his editor who visits him every weekend to steer the book. Pauline becomes increasingly distraught and furious as the story progresses and the affair continues in broad daylight. She is wrecked with guilt as she's the one who introduced her daughter to Maurice at a work party. Her remorse at bringing the very despair and heartbreak she fought so hard to her daughter's life and her helplessness at being unable to persuade her daughter to abandon Maurice consume her being. Tensions escalate and the novel ends in a foreshadowed climax that is satisfyingly predictable.
The novel reminded me of a subtler version of Elena Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment. Lively's books are always a pleasure to read, strewn as they are with witty insights and ruminations. Heat Wave is a piercing exploration of motherhood and the trauma inflicted by infidelity. We don't hear from the perspectives of the male adulterers who brush off their infidelities as something trivial and inevitable, and that speaks to the misogyny of those times.
A TV adaptation could do this novel great justice, with Charlotte Rampling as Pauline, Daisy Edgar Jones as Teresa, and Alex Hassell as Maurice.
In Heat Wave, Penelope Lively takes an interesting idea and elevates it with her wise, witty and wonderful prose. The protagonist Pauline is a copy editor living in a cottage in the countryside, and she is visited by her daughter Teresa, son-in-law Maurice and grandson Luke. Maurice is a writer of increasing popularity who aims to complete his new book over the summer, for which he takes several day trips to the tourist attractions in the countryside.
Pauline appears initially as an emotionally distant and detached character, but flashes of her past establish the kind of person she is and lay bare the scars from her unsuccessful marriage in which her ex-husband continuously cheated on her. She recognizes a younger version of herself in Teresa who is head-over-heels in love with her new husband who's 15 years older than her. She senses that Maurice is an infidel and having an affair with Carol, the girlfriend of his editor who visits him every weekend to steer the book. Pauline becomes increasingly distraught and furious as the story progresses and the affair continues in broad daylight. She is wrecked with guilt as she's the one who introduced her daughter to Maurice at a work party. Her remorse at bringing the very despair and heartbreak she fought so hard to her daughter's life and her helplessness at being unable to persuade her daughter to abandon Maurice consume her being. Tensions escalate and the novel ends in a foreshadowed climax that is satisfyingly predictable.
The novel reminded me of a subtler version of Elena Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment. Lively's books are always a pleasure to read, strewn as they are with witty insights and ruminations. Heat Wave is a piercing exploration of motherhood and the trauma inflicted by infidelity. We don't hear from the perspectives of the male adulterers who brush off their infidelities as something trivial and inevitable, and that speaks to the misogyny of those times.
A TV adaptation could do this novel great justice, with Charlotte Rampling as Pauline, Daisy Edgar Jones as Teresa, and Alex Hassell as Maurice.
January 10, 2021
It's a pleasure to find a Penelope Lively novel that I hadn't read before. She is a writer I can rely on to provide astute characterisation and wise insights into relationships. As the title suggest, in this novel Lively also creates an intense psychological atmosphere that reflects the intensity of a brutally hot British summer. (Although writing this on an Adelaide summer day where the mercury has hit 37 degrees Celsius I wonder how hot it actually was!) The pace of the novel is slow but absorbing. A slow burn in more ways than one.
Pauline is a freelance editor, working in the country for the summer. She is also mother to Teresa who lives in an adjoining cottage with her husband Maurice and baby Luke. Maurice, also a writer, is considerably older than Teresa. The narrative moves between the time when Pauline was married to Harry and discovered he was a philanderer and the present, where she fears the same for Teresa and Maurice. There is no-one better than Penelope Lively in showing how the past is more than memory: it co-exists with and informs the present.
What adds to the depth of this novel is that the book Pauline is editing is a fantasy involving a knight and a lady, faithfulness and infidelity. It illustrates how many endings there can be to stories of love and betrayal. The conclusion of Lively's novel, dramatic as it is, is just one of many possible endings.
Pauline is a freelance editor, working in the country for the summer. She is also mother to Teresa who lives in an adjoining cottage with her husband Maurice and baby Luke. Maurice, also a writer, is considerably older than Teresa. The narrative moves between the time when Pauline was married to Harry and discovered he was a philanderer and the present, where she fears the same for Teresa and Maurice. There is no-one better than Penelope Lively in showing how the past is more than memory: it co-exists with and informs the present.
What adds to the depth of this novel is that the book Pauline is editing is a fantasy involving a knight and a lady, faithfulness and infidelity. It illustrates how many endings there can be to stories of love and betrayal. The conclusion of Lively's novel, dramatic as it is, is just one of many possible endings.
May 20, 2017
Another wonderful novel from Penelope Lively. This is one of those "quiet" novels that nevertheless thrills with its beautiful language and astute characterisation. The descriptions of rural life and the seasons are perfect. Highly recommend this one for its subtlety, humour and deep understanding of human nature.
Read
August 13, 2024one of the best reading experiences I've had in ages
May 22, 2025
fresh insight into familiar narratives. Heat Wave is the story of an elder writer couple , their only daugher and her only son. Lively has a really beautiful, unique way of depicting women. All complex in their own ways but nothing is pushed to far for sake of narration. I think female characters often fall into this sort of spectacle trap where they must exist in extremes, be really hated or really adored, the characters in Heat Wage glide right past that trap of female character development and exist exactly how they are. It’s really light and refreshing and I think it’s fantastic narration. I also really appreciated how much agency , Luke, the new born baby had it was entirely new to me.
The characters are orientated around worlds end - a cottage in the midst of the English countryside. Lively has some of the most delicate, perceptive descriptions of the countryside I’ve ever read. The type of perceptions I feel like I’d only be able to emulate if I spent an extended time writing and existing deep in the countryside -it’s the type of affection you only have once you’ve really existed in every crevice of a place.
I don’t know Penelope Lively’s backstory so maybe I’m projecting with that but It’s the type of affection I feel like I’m yet to have with any place I’ve lived. In the cities I’ve lived all of the aesthetic adoration is wrapped up in its ‘Coolness’ , the social & commercial events that place can offer but Lively’s descriptions of the English countryside surpass and ignore all of its external human influences and just stand in its own beauty, I felt half jealous, half in awe of her descriptions of nature.
4.5/5
The characters are orientated around worlds end - a cottage in the midst of the English countryside. Lively has some of the most delicate, perceptive descriptions of the countryside I’ve ever read. The type of perceptions I feel like I’d only be able to emulate if I spent an extended time writing and existing deep in the countryside -it’s the type of affection you only have once you’ve really existed in every crevice of a place.
I don’t know Penelope Lively’s backstory so maybe I’m projecting with that but It’s the type of affection I feel like I’m yet to have with any place I’ve lived. In the cities I’ve lived all of the aesthetic adoration is wrapped up in its ‘Coolness’ , the social & commercial events that place can offer but Lively’s descriptions of the English countryside surpass and ignore all of its external human influences and just stand in its own beauty, I felt half jealous, half in awe of her descriptions of nature.
4.5/5
December 15, 2024
this made me cry on a plane
February 7, 2025
Really enjoyed this book. Vivid descriptions and was an easy read
September 2, 2020
Heat Wave narrates the interactions between several intertwined characters between the months of May through to August. Pauline, a copy writer, spends this summer in her countryside cottage working on several submissions while accompanied by her grown-up daughter, Teresa, who in turn is accompanied by her infant son and her husband, Maurice. During the course of their stay, it becomes apparent to Pauline that Maurice is having an extra-marital affair with the partner of his own book editor. The novel describes Pauline's anguish and sense of helplessness at witnessing her daughter's family breakdown while reflecting on her own experiences of infidelity in her previous marriage.
The reader is privy to Pauline's painful and moving analysis of the family breakdown and profoundly sympathises with the mother's heartbreaking, helpless position as she can only watch the misery unfold for her daughter. Lively cleverly juxtaposes the fractured relationship between Maurice and Teresa with other, far more compelling and supportive relationships found in the novel such as that between Pauline and Chris, Chris and his own family, Pauline and Hugh. This creates several commentaries on what is family, love, and infidelity.
The treatment of time and memory in the novel is also enthralling as the narrative switches back and forth between the current infidelity experienced by Teresa and the comparative, past relationship between Pauline and her ex-husband. Pauline is sadly all-knowing. The seasonal descriptions in the novel reflect the events of the story well without falling into the cliche.
This story contains little dramatic action and at times can be a slow read. The novel's conclusion does feel unnecessary and juxtaposed to the character of Pauline the reader has come to know. However, these minor points do not detract much from the overall power of the novel
The reader is privy to Pauline's painful and moving analysis of the family breakdown and profoundly sympathises with the mother's heartbreaking, helpless position as she can only watch the misery unfold for her daughter. Lively cleverly juxtaposes the fractured relationship between Maurice and Teresa with other, far more compelling and supportive relationships found in the novel such as that between Pauline and Chris, Chris and his own family, Pauline and Hugh. This creates several commentaries on what is family, love, and infidelity.
The treatment of time and memory in the novel is also enthralling as the narrative switches back and forth between the current infidelity experienced by Teresa and the comparative, past relationship between Pauline and her ex-husband. Pauline is sadly all-knowing. The seasonal descriptions in the novel reflect the events of the story well without falling into the cliche.
This story contains little dramatic action and at times can be a slow read. The novel's conclusion does feel unnecessary and juxtaposed to the character of Pauline the reader has come to know. However, these minor points do not detract much from the overall power of the novel
May 23, 2017
Vicarious Jealousy
Pauline Carter, a fifty-something free-lance book editor, lives at World's End, a cottage in the middle of a wheatfield somewhere in the English Midlands. She has rented the slightly larger cottage next door for the summer to her daughter Teresa, who is occupied with her toddler Luke. This is so that Teresa's husband Maurice can put the finishing touches on a book about the tourist industry; a television series is on the drawing-board. The novel runs from May through August, in an unusually hot summer as the title might suggest, although Lively does not make the physical heat as palpable as the growing emotional tension.
But I get ahead of myself; the first half of the book is mainly a gentle but sharply observed account of a mother watching her grown daughter learn motherhood in her turn:
Pauline Carter, a fifty-something free-lance book editor, lives at World's End, a cottage in the middle of a wheatfield somewhere in the English Midlands. She has rented the slightly larger cottage next door for the summer to her daughter Teresa, who is occupied with her toddler Luke. This is so that Teresa's husband Maurice can put the finishing touches on a book about the tourist industry; a television series is on the drawing-board. The novel runs from May through August, in an unusually hot summer as the title might suggest, although Lively does not make the physical heat as palpable as the growing emotional tension.
But I get ahead of myself; the first half of the book is mainly a gentle but sharply observed account of a mother watching her grown daughter learn motherhood in her turn:
Back then in the cathedral town, she was an expert on child time. She knew with precision just how many hours could be consumed by an excursion to the park, by the shopping, by sleep, by a visit to a friend. Now she wants to explain to Teresa that it is all an illusion, that in fact the months are racing by and Luke with them, an irretrievable succession of Lukes, but she knows that this would make no sense to Teresa, who is in the thick of it.Contrast this with another mother-daughter moment about sixty pages later, superficially similar, but utterly different:
There is a silence—a silence in which a wordless conversation takes place, the product of years of intimacy and of intuitive interpretation of the set of a mouth, of the flavour of a glance—the undertow of all that is unspoken. "Look," says Pauline, "I know. Don't think I don't know because I say nothing." And Teresa tells her "I know you know, and I don't want you to say anything. If you said anything I would get up and walk away. Because I can't stand to talk about it, least of all with you."What has happened is that Pauline is no longer making common cause with her daughter in the role of mother, but that of wife. We learn early on (and the book jacket will tell us) that Pauline feels she stayed far too long with Teresa's father Harry, a media-darling academic and a serial philanderer, and now she fears that Teresa is about to get the same treatment from Maurice. At one point, Pailine describes herself as an expert on jealousy, but what we have here is even harder to deal with: vicarious jealousy, felt on behalf of her daughter, impotently and in silence. Pethaps Lively made too much of the flashbacks of Pauline with Harry; we get the picture early and the details don't add much. But her treatment of the slowly deteriorating state of affairs in the adjoining cottage is pitch-perfect in its alternation of doubt and remission, leading to a decisive (but arguably excessive) climax when the hot weather finally breaks.
July 10, 2020
“This tranquil landscape apparently heaves with unrest. There is more here than meets the eye.”
This sentence could just as easily describe the domestic lives of our characters as it does the seemingly tranquil English countryside in Lively’s study of marriage, fidelity, motherhood and memory. Set during an uncharacteristically oppressive summer, the plot follows Pauline as her son-in-law’s affair forces her into a reconsideration of her own past.
There were some beautiful themes here that were teased out masterfully- that the present can wash over the familiar and feel immediately brand new, how distance does not mitigate pain but only changes how we feel it. We forget the summer as soon as the autumn chill creeps in, only to recognize its familiarity as soon as the days grow longer. Heat Wave is about these cyclical patterns of familiarity, how the past and present are inextricably wrapped together and forever imbuing each other with new meaning.
This is my first Lively but it definitely won’t be my last. This book was glorious. The events are set in stone from the beginning – and even the shock in the last few pages does not come out of nowhere – but the story never drags itself along to an inevitable conclusion. Instead Lively gives almost unbearably honest insight into the relationship between mother and daughter, husband and wife, and the past and present self. A really, really good read.
This sentence could just as easily describe the domestic lives of our characters as it does the seemingly tranquil English countryside in Lively’s study of marriage, fidelity, motherhood and memory. Set during an uncharacteristically oppressive summer, the plot follows Pauline as her son-in-law’s affair forces her into a reconsideration of her own past.
There were some beautiful themes here that were teased out masterfully- that the present can wash over the familiar and feel immediately brand new, how distance does not mitigate pain but only changes how we feel it. We forget the summer as soon as the autumn chill creeps in, only to recognize its familiarity as soon as the days grow longer. Heat Wave is about these cyclical patterns of familiarity, how the past and present are inextricably wrapped together and forever imbuing each other with new meaning.
This is my first Lively but it definitely won’t be my last. This book was glorious. The events are set in stone from the beginning – and even the shock in the last few pages does not come out of nowhere – but the story never drags itself along to an inevitable conclusion. Instead Lively gives almost unbearably honest insight into the relationship between mother and daughter, husband and wife, and the past and present self. A really, really good read.
January 29, 2019
If you like endless poetic sentences that run and run gushing about usually middle class people who you don't really care about getting into self inflicted situations all of their own making and breaking - this is the book for you. Sadly it is not the book for me. What a bunch of self centred 'posh' I couldn't care less about! All the problems they bring on themselves and I hate myself for saying, they throughly deserve. And written in such wafflefull nonsense - sorry I've got paint to watch dry. Don't waste your time - this gives indulgent writing, even Byron, a bad name.
Toast
PS The edition I have has a lovely cover from Penguin Modern Classics edition 1997 Angie Lewin - the only plus point.
Toast
PS The edition I have has a lovely cover from Penguin Modern Classics edition 1997 Angie Lewin - the only plus point.
March 6, 2021
Penelope Lively is so good at what she does, and I get the sense that she is sadly under-read. In Heat Wave, a middle-aged copy editor named Pauline takes up a summer residence in a ramshackle cottage with her daughter, Teresa, and her daughter’s family: husband, Maurice, a writer, and infant son, Luke. In Lively’s skillful hands, a story in which little happens becomes rich with internal drama, past reflections on former lives (and lives that could have been), and a fair dose of heartache. Thrillingly quick and a pleasure from start to finish.
September 3, 2017
Thanks to Jana for introducing me to this wonderful author! I very much enjoyed this subtle story and the tightening of the emotions as it progressed. I didn't love the ending, but can see how others would. 3.5 stars and will definitely read more by this author.
July 5, 2018
This is an atmospheric little gem- the tension builds to a climax as a mother watches the collapse of her daughter's marriage in painful slow motion.
This made me late leaving for work this morning as I HAD to finish it before I left.
This made me late leaving for work this morning as I HAD to finish it before I left.
Read
December 31, 2019A woman watches her daughter's marriage collapse, remembers her own marriage doing the same, considers the eternal war between the sexes, makes her own contribution to the fight. Excellent. The writing and characterization are subtle but strong, and it's got a great sting. Good stuff.
August 4, 2024
Lively is such an expert in psychological studies. As someone who is highly susceptible to subtle details that signal mood changes and things being said between the lines, I adore reading about characters who are the same way. In this one, mother and grandmother Pauline gradually comes to understand what is happening in her daughter Teresa’s marriage to her older husband Maurice through exactly such subtle details of their various interactions with both each other and an editor couple who comes to visit several times during a particularly hot summer. That, as much as the increasingly oppressive weather hurtling towards a late-summer climax, creates a palpable tension which, to me, is as good as any action-filled plot. I raced through this one and was happy to finally read more fiction by Lively.
Personally, though, I would have preferred a less sensationalist ending. It seemed like a bit of a genre shift and an easy ‘out’. Considering the time it was published, however, I’m inclined to let it off the hook and let my wish for a strong feminist taking-charge-of-my-own-life ending lie.
Personally, though, I would have preferred a less sensationalist ending. It seemed like a bit of a genre shift and an easy ‘out’. Considering the time it was published, however, I’m inclined to let it off the hook and let my wish for a strong feminist taking-charge-of-my-own-life ending lie.
January 11, 2018
With Lively's subtle, yet direct, storytelling, you see and feel the story unfolding at the perfect pace. You know where it's going...maybe. You get to the denouement, so satisfying, and then you get to the end, and you wonder. If you haven't read Penelope Lively, this is your introduction to her rich, vast and complex humanity.
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