Instructions for a Heatwave is a novel that revolves around the oxymoron of those urges. I wanted to capture the essence of family life, and to do this it had to be both a hymn of praise and a growl of frustration.
Novels about family are sometimes referred to as “domestic fiction”; I refute this categorisation as it carries the implication that these are somehow small novels, dealing with minor human concerns. The family is far from a “small” subject: think of Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, novels vast in ambition, scope and depth. In the right hands, books that have the tightest of focus on one household, one marriage, one person can address the whole spectrum of human experience. I have taken inspiration from countless novels, from a lifetime of reading, but these are some of the books on the subject of family that I have loved, reread, and pressed into the hands of others.
Good Behaviour – Molly Keane
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Any and all of the Patrick Melrose novels – Edward St Aubyn
Brightness Falls & The Good Life – Jay McInerney
Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
O Caledonia – Elspeth Barker
I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
Anna Karenina – Tolstoy
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You – Amy Bloom
The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope
Troubles – JG Farrell
The Rabbit Tetralogy – John Updike
Middlesex – Jeffery Eugenides
The Travelling Hornplayer – Barbara Trapido
Invitation to the Waltz – Rosamund Lehmann
Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson
The Descendents – Kaui Hart Hemmings
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Howards End – EM Forster
Diary of a Provincial Lady – EM Delafield
Sour Sweet – Timothy Mo
The Tortoise and the Hare – Elizabeth Jenkins
