If you spend enough time around books – reading books, reading reviews, shelving books – you start to notice trends, and sometimes they’re very specific. (For example in the first half of 2019, there were at least two books with main characters in comas reassessing their lives: The Inbetween Days and The Book of Dreams). Sometimes, of course, an event is so significant that it resonates through the stories people tell for years afterward. But it doesn’t have to be something world-changing, like World War II or the current COVID-19 pandemic. It can be something smaller that nonetheless reverberates. In that vein, I bring you three books that all take place in England during the summer of 1976, a year there was such an epic heatwave it continues to be evoked in fiction.
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
In a small English town during the sweltering summer of 1976, ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly entertain themselves wandering the neighborhood as the adults take refuge inside homes with curtains shut against the sun. When kind Mrs. Creasy disappears, Grace and Tilly go in search of clues as to what may have happened to her. As long-held secrets come to light, Grace and Tilly discover a history of deception which they grapple to understand. In their starred review, Booklist called it an “understated, somewhat quirky debut novel … remarkable for its structure, characterizations, pitch-perfect prose, touches of humor, and humanity.”
The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit by Graham Joyce
The scorching summer of 1976 finds college student David working at the run-down seaside resort where his biological father disappeared 15 years earlier. During the day David runs various entertainments for families at the resort, while in his off time he navigates the nascent extremist anti-immigrant politics of the National Front and his attraction to a married woman. As the heatwave builds and an infestation of ladybugs invades the town, David is haunted by visions of a man in a blue suit, and something darker threatens. This darkly supernatural story is “marvelously juicy entertainment” according to Kirkus Reviews.
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell
When their father abruptly drains his bank account and disappears shortly after his retirement, his three grown children descend on their mother’s house in London. As the heatwave and tempers alike swell, the three follow the trail to Ireland where they each struggle with their own problems (fracturing marriages, familial estrangement) as they begin to unearth long buried family secrets. “A skillfully written novel of manners, with quiet domestic drama spiced with fine comic moments. The payoff is priceless, too” avows Kirkus Reviews.
~ posted by Andrea G.
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