Edinburgh International Book Festival: Maggie O’Farrell

As the rain beats down on the roof of the Baillie Gifford Theatre, Maggie O’Farrell discusses her new novel, Instructions for a Heatwave. The irony of the bad weather during an event titled ‘Hot Summer; Red Hot Writer’ is not lost on the Costa Award-winning author and the Chair Jackie McGlone. The pair laugh as they turn up the volume on their microphones to counter the drumming sound on the canvas ceiling. As an Edinburgh local, however, the wet August evening will have come as no surprise for O’Farrell.

The author, who chose the famous drought of 1976 as the backdrop for the new novel, describes her fascination with heatwaves which she believes form an "important part of the British psyche." Indeed, the long hot summer in question forms the bedrock of her earliest memories – she remembers seeing her garden as a "benign, light-filled space," and recalls the summer as a child’s dream of suncreamless, outdoor play. Leaving a complicated continent-spanning historical novel uncompleted, she was inspired to write Instructions for a Heatwave during the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010. Intrigued by the sense of collective panic that overcame London as clouds of volcanic ash drifted over Europe, she was reminded of the that searing summer of her childhood when politicians were anxious that the serious lack of water would result in riots and mass hysteria.

O’Farrell has been labelled by some as a "women’s writer," and she echoes many of her female contemporaries by saying that she finds the term frustrating. She comments that she would never choose to read a book based on the sex of the author, nor would she ever designate a subject matter as intrinsically masculine or feminine. The audience, it must be noted, is made up predominantly of women and many nod along in agreement.

Her latest novel contains a cast of predominantly female characters, a conscious decision on her part so as to explore the feminist boom of the 1970s. Rather than write directly about those involved in the politics of feminism, O’Farrell choose a more subtle approach by examining "the way in which the movement trickled down into the suburban household." The result is Gretta, the matriarch of the Riordan family upon whom the novel centres. Gretta chooses to return to study and take a backseat in family life, leaving laundry to pile up and the children to run riot. In juxtaposition, her son Michael Francis senses the first stages of breakdown "in the crumbling edifice of patriarchy and doesn’t like it one bit!’"

The evening is peppered with anecdotes from O’Farrell which raise just as many laughs as the readings of excerpts from the novel. She is in person as warm, funny and entertaining as anyone who has read her writing would imagine.