Book Beginnings on Fridays..

Hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader

Book Beginnings on Fridays as stated by the host was started:

 "to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires."

You can share on Google + and social media , please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings

and there's also a Mr Linky on the host's blog.

Book Beginning : Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

Tinder Press
February 2013
An imprint of Headline Publishing Group

Highbury, London

The heat, the heat. It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs. It inhabits the house like a guest who has outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs. The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table.

...I am intrigued by this opening paragraph and need to understand why heat is inhabiting the living space and I wonder why Gretta feels so overwhelmed that she has to sink to the floor.....



**

A bit of the blurb
 thanks to Goodreads

It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children — two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce — back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.

**

I've chosen this book to read now as we've had a reasonably hot summer in the UK, which these days is something of a rarity - our summers are now notoriously rainy. I remember very clearly the long hot summer of 1976 - I was just out of school and in a serious romance. The whole hot summer stretched endlessly ahead of me - long lazy days, skies the colour of blackbirds eggs and a summer of love.....

.......and yes, reader , I married him !