Heat Wave
Reader Score
79%
79% of readers
recommend this book
A quiet drama is unfolding in World's End. A two-dwelling gray stone cottage outside of London, it is home to Pauline, a 55-year-old widow, her daughter Teresa, her son-in-law Maurice, and her grandson Luke. Although on the surface this literary English family seems to be living an idyllic life, Pauline fears for her daughter, for she senses that Maurice is infatuated with another woman. As the summer draws on and the temperatures reach record levels, she finds herself forced to confront the lingering, simmering anger she still feels over the infidelity of her own late husband while watching her daughter's marriage come to an end."You don't want to part company with these characters, who, time and again, elicit a sensation of intense familiarity."
Book Details
- Publisher: Harper Perennial
- Publish Date: Sep 6th, 1997
- Pages: 228
- Language: English
- Dimensions: 7.99in - 5.31in - 0.54in - 0.40lb
- EAN: 9780060928551
- Categories: • Psychological• Literary
About the Author
Lively, Penelope: -
Penelope Lively was born in 1933 in Cairo and spent her childhood there, moving to England in the last year of World War II. She has written many prizewinning novels and collections of short stories for both adults and children, including the novel Moon Tiger, which won England's prestigious Booker Prize in England in 1987, and most recently Heat Wave. She lives in Oxfordshire and London.
Penelope Lively was born in 1933 in Cairo and spent her childhood there, moving to England in the last year of World War II. She has written many prizewinning novels and collections of short stories for both adults and children, including the novel Moon Tiger, which won England's prestigious Booker Prize in England in 1987, and most recently Heat Wave. She lives in Oxfordshire and London.
Praise for this book
"You don't want to part company with these characters, who, time and again, elicit a sensation of intense familiarity." -- "The New Yorker""The work is Jamesian...in its complexities and its carefulness....A lovely, lovely novel." -- Fay Weldon, "Los Angeles Times""Lively knows well the topography of the human heart." -- "People""Absorbingly readable....Ms. Lively evokes the atmosphere of anxiety, suspicion, and frustration with great finesse." -- "Wall Street Journal""Witty, intelligent, and understated...Its conclusion...adds a dash of the unexpected and the delicious to what is otherwise a quiet story, such as most of us live to tell."-- Jonathan Yardley, "Washington Post""A satisfying novel...[Lively] creates a convincing picture of obsessive sexual love tainted by jealousy and misery."-- "Publishers Weekly" (starred review)