If you spend enough time around books – reading books, reading reviews, shelving books – you start to notice trends, and sometimes they’re very specific. (For example in the first half of 2019, there were at least two books with main characters in comas reassessing their lives: The Inbetween Days and The Book of Dreams). Sometimes, of course, an event is so significant that it resonates through the stories people tell for years afterward. But it doesn’t have to be something world-changing, like World War II or the current COVID-19 pandemic. It can be something smaller that nonetheless reverberates. In that vein, I bring you three books that all take place in England during the summer of 1976, a year there was such an epic heatwave it continues to be evoked in fiction.
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
In a small English town during the sweltering summer of 1976, ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly entertain themselves wandering the neighborhood as the adults take refuge inside homes with curtains shut against the sun. When kind Mrs. Creasy disappears, Grace and Tilly go in search of clues as to what may have happened to her. As long-held secrets come to light, Grace and Tilly discover a history of deception which they grapple to understand. In their starred review, Booklist called it an “understated, somewhat quirky debut novel … remarkable for its structure, characterizations, pitch-perfect prose, touches of humor, and humanity.” Continue reading “England, 1976: Heatwave”
