They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it’s almost impossible not to when you see a Persephone book. Their elegant, dove-grey covers, appealing size, simple design and gorgeously colourful endpapers make you want to adore the book before you’ve even begun reading it.heat lightening

Luckily, with Heat Lightning, there’s a lot to adore. Persephone specialise in reissuing books written by forgotten or under-represented female authors, and I have to confess that I had never heard of Helen Hull before. A fact which is perhaps surprising, given that she was the author of 17 novels and was - in her time - quite successful. Somehow, since then, her name has drifted out of the mainstream. I can only be thankful that Persephone Books decided to bring her back into the limelight; judging by the beauty and impact of Heat Lightning, the limelight is exactly where Hull deserves to be.

Heat Lightning is set in the stiflingly hot summer of 1930. The protagonist, Amy, is the married mother of two who returns, alone, from the city to the small town where she grew up, and where most of her family still lives. From the opening scene, in which Amy stands, wilting in the heat with her luggage, and tries to work out why exactly she has come, we understand that she is running away from something, and searching for something else – but what that something is, she does not know: ‘Her coming had been a kind of flight, and like all flight, what she had run from had been far clearer than her goal.’

What Amy is running from, we soon discover, is a strange shift in her relationship with her husband, Geoffrey. She has escaped home to try and work out what it is that has gone wrong. What she runs into is a complex drama played out between several generations of the Westover family. Presided over by the matriarchal Madam Westover, Amy’s grandmother and a fiercely proud, independent woman, Amy’s parents, uncles and aunts, brother and sister and cousins all seem locked in a claustrophobic web for which the oppressive, airless heat soon becomes an apt metaphor.
Amy’s intention in coming home is to immerse herself in her family, and to observe each of them closely in a bid to understand herself and her own actions more clearly. She is preoccupied with the idea of discovering her ‘code’, and learning how it is that she should behave. She tries to sink into the background in order to better observe the others – something she finds simple, as Hull notes: ‘‘Not one person in a hundred really listened to another. They all had their ears too close to the ground, attentive to their own familiar footfalls.’

helen hull heat lightning

Hull’s characterisation is precise and occasionally merciless. In sharp contrast to the admirable yet formidable Madam Westover is Amy’s Aunt Lora, who Hull describes as: ‘all loose ends; her bright strings of coloured stones, her earrings… Walk past a counter with trays of loose beads at a five and ten cent store, and you had Lora.’ Lora is a dramatic woman prone to fits of hysterics. Characterised by her flowing dresses and clinking beads, she relies on her weaknesses to try and make others do as she wishes: ‘She expected her picture of herself as a charming, helpless little woman to meet all difficulties.’ Hull’s cutting portrayal of Lora could perhaps hint at an impatience with weak women. Other female characters are presented far more favourably, from the quiet dignity of Amy’s mother to the calm eloquence of her French sister-in-law, Felice.

Although it was Hull’s excellent descriptions and accurate portrayal of family life that I most admired about this book, there is a great deal more to it than that. It’s setting, for example, in the summer after the stock market crash of 1929, gives it a new relevance today. Although it describes events that took place 80 years ago, the sense of disbelief and economic uncertainty ring true, as do certain characters’ senses of entitlement to money that, quite frankly, just isn’t there any more.

It would be difficult to fully describe the power of Heat Lightning without giving away parts of the plot, but it is safe to say that this is a book that deals masterfully with both the remarkable and the mundane; from family squabbles to economic crisis; from the fading of love to the renewal of desire; from the simple pleasures of sitting on a porch peeling peaches to the agony of grief. Most of all, though, it is a fantastic representation of family, and love, and the feeling of coming home again.

Heat Lightning by Helen Hull is available to buy online here.