Heat Wave : A Novel by Penelope Lively


Amazon.com
The weather is blistering but the emotions are chilly in this intimate, elegant novel set in the British countryside during a summer of record heat. A mother is watching the end of her daughter's marriage while confronting her own simmering anger over the infidelity of her own departed husband, years before. Penelope Lively's intense but muted style mirrors the detached anguish of her characters, who are groping toward their true feelings.

Book Description
It is a long, hot summer at World's End, a two-family grey stone cottage in the English countryside. Pauline is editing a romance novel in the smaller dwelling, and the larger part is occupied by her daughter, Teresa; Teresa's baby; and her husband, Maurice, a writer, whose infatuation with his editor's girlfriend is growing.

Pauline fears for Teresa, who is passionately in love with her husband, for she senses Maurice's imminent betrayal. She remembers a time when her possessive passion for Teresa's father eroded her own youth. A stunning and unexpected denouncement irrevocably changes the order of things for this family, whose intimacy the reader abandons reluctantly at novel's end.

Summary
A two-dwelling greystone cottage outside of London, World's End is home to Pauline, 1 55-year-old widow, her daughter Teresa, her son-in-law Maurice, and her grandson Luke. 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.

 

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