Reading Through a Heatwave
Heatwaves in literature, a book list and yoga tomorrow- which you might want to take outside.
It is 5 am and I am awake, hot and still, legs thrown over sheets which are more cover than I need. Both windows in my room are open, usually a surefire draught, and yet there is no movement. Instead the air is thick with anticipatory heat, as though the day knows its own forecast. A heatwave we’ve been told.
It doesn’t take much here to be called one; just three consecutive days with temperatures slightly above the norm, which just sounds like ‘summer’ for anyone south of here. But it feels ample when landlocked. And it has been building for days, weeks even, in the same way a storm does. Not just a climbing of the mercury but a gathering of atmosphere. A conviction of heat that is both rare and particular. And peaking in a narrative that almost feels too obvious, with midsummer’s eve.
It is no surprise that heatwaves have long been used as literary devices; as central to plot as any story, a character as much as any other. Something about extreme heat becomes so arresting- the way it slows and warps time, makes the body bristle with its own definition and swells emotion with such magnitude that we can feel like we are a character in our own story.
I hadn’t realised until I thought of it this weekend, that to an extent that ca’nt be coincidence, most of my favourite books are set in heatwaves. Offering a particularly defined timeframe, a natural arc that builds and necessarily breaks, lending its intensity to relationship and interaction, and creating just enough tension to be provocative - they offer up a heady and compelling backdrop to narratives, all of which become somehow hot and arresting as a result.
So this is a list of books not just set in heat but good for it, in case you can carve out an afternoon to curl up under a tree with a book. Or dream of doing so.
I found a copy of this book on the shelf of a friends coastal house last week and immediately bought a second hand copy to get home to. It is a long time since I have read this book but it is completely perfect for a heatwave; with rational tensions and expanding heat in equal measure. Set amidst a hot English summer, with beautiful and languid descriptions of the countryside, this is a story about breakdown of a marriage in particular, but also about relationships more generally. Beautifully paced and really evocative- not least because of the extreme and unusual heat- this would be the perfect book for the next week or so.
The is Happiness by Niall Williams
One of my top five books of all time, and not just because it is set in a mythical Irish village where the rain never stops, until this particular summer when it does. Find themselves amidst an uncanny dry and hot spell- for which no one on the mythical village of Faha is prepared- this is classic coming of age story on a rural stage, beset by the arrival of electricity and so amidst its own change. Niall William’s is one of the single best writers out there; his characters nuanced but also complete, his descriptions so perfectly pitched that you imagine yourself there - I always completely lose myself in his books. And this one just happens to involve unseasonable heat as well.
Famously set in a heatwave over an English summer, but also with a story that spans the bulk of a century, this book doesn’t especially need introduction. Most people have read the book or seen the movie or both- but if you haven’t then you are in for a treat. Spellbinding and still, I think, McEwans best book.
I have always been mildly obsessed with Deborah Levy but never more so than now, having seen her and swooned over her every utterance at the Charleston Literary festival. My two favourite of her books are Swimming Home and Hot Milk, set in coastal France and Spain respectively and both in heat that is fierce enough to add to the already tension that she so provocatively and sensually portrays. Small books that pack big and surreal punch. If you can steal away long enough you could read either in a single and ideally hot afternoon.
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Both a classic novel and small masterpiece. I rarely read books more than once but this I have read twice and will happily read again. And it is another book that is probably in my best five of all time. Set amidst the searing beauty of the south of France in summer and the equally simmering desire of its main character Cecile, this captures the precociousness but also frailty of adolescence better than any other book I have read.
YOGA CLASS THIS WEEK Tuesday 17th June 9-10am
I am back at home and Tuesday Zoom yoga is on as usual tomorrow. We will do a practice focussed on the third eye, entitled ‘All Seeing, All Knowing’ which will be a deeply thoughtful and very meditative exploration of the Ajna (third eye) chakra, involving gentle flow, longer holds, and particular attention. And we will add some cooling breath practices so that it can be used throughout a mini heatwave, if you find yourself amidst one.
Book Here to join and/or receive the recording which will last you the whole week.
x Nicole