Heat Wave

Putting a mother and her grown daughter in side by side cottages in the English countryside, even if only for the summer, is a recipe for disaster. Pauline is the 55 year old voice of Penelope Lively's novel, Heat Wave, and her tenants are her 29 year old daughter, her 14 month old grandson, and--most importantly--the daughter's husband. Maurice, like many of Lively's male characters is peripheral since her focus is often on the generational bonds (some good, some destructive) between women, but his actions are the center of Heat Wave.

Maurice is a writer of popular historical non-fiction-- jaunty travel guides on popular culture-- and Pauline, regretfully, is the one who first introduced this man to her daughter. Maurice is closer to Pauline's age, but he's a charming seducer. We don't see the charm, of course, because Pauline is our already-jaded guide to life with Maurice, but it's certainly hinted at.
While Pauline watches with increasing despair as her daughter begins to understand all those weekend visits with a certain Carol--whose boyfriend is editing Maurice's book--she cannot help but reflect on her similar position years ago.

Pauline's somewhat passive-aggressive battle with Maurice is, in many ways, her effort to make up for her failure to act against her own ex-husband, another flamboyant academic. The difference this time is she wants to protect her daughter in a way she failed to do when Theresa was a child. In ways, Pauline is stronger now, and Maurice is a more distant target for her smoldering anger. Also, apparently the heat wave is the very match that that anger needs. There's a massive, raging storm during the denouement. That, naturally, signals the end of the oppressive heat, and spells certain doom for smarmy, philandering husbands.

Lively puts in touches of humor throughout the book, often where you least expect it. For example, in the middle of her personal turmoil, Pauline finds herself having to advise a young writer living "half-way up a mountain in Wales" whose book she's copy editing. She simply tells an acquaintance she's currently "putting commas in a story about unicorns,' but she's also talking this young man out of destroying his marriage and giving up on writing, and she does it well. We may not relate to the characters in Heat Wave, but we can see why they have friends. I just didn't find them all that likeable. Maurice, obviously, is not to be liked, but even Pauline is difficult to take at times. She's secretly irritated by her daughter's passivity--in career, in parenting, in choice of blindness--but Pauline recognizes the same in herself. Neither of these women is trapped the way some women might be. Theresa is a stay-at-home mother by choice--she had a successful and creative career. Pauline is independent and intelligent. Any cages around them are psychological and self-built. Lively often writes about how memory and our pasts can trap us and Heat Wave, an early book, sets us up to enjoy her later books in which we find some characters to root for.