An Exceptionally Hot Summer

An Exceptionally Hot Summer turns weather into a pressure that is both public and intimate. The heat settles over a newly built neighborhood, where lawns, gardens, and family life are carefully maintained, even as Peter and Eva confront the future of their marriage and their desire for a child. Across the season, the same oppressive warmth accompanies Peter’s renewed sense of possibility and Eva’s mounting attention to a plan with Rebecca.

Heat in the New Neighborhood

Peter describes a heatwave that has lasted for days: the newly laid street is so hot that asphalt sticks to shoes, and children play in swimsuits beneath a sun that burns their pale skin. Parents retreat to parasols and brand-new garden chairs, fretting over lawns that dry faster than they can water them. The newly arrived residents make the neighborhood look settled and prosperous, but the heat exposes how much work goes into preserving that appearance.

Peter’s own garden offers a small contrast. He has spent every spare hour over the previous two weeks working on it, and an irrigation system keeps the grass vividly green. With no children trampling the tender shoots, the lawn stays immaculate. That absence is not merely practical: elsewhere, Peter imagines himself pushing a buggy and buying nappies, hoping to become a parent in the very kind of ordinary suburb whose lawns and routines surround him. The green garden is evidence of care and control, but also a reminder of the family life he has not yet achieved.

The weather also changes how time feels. At the beach, the summer has only just officially begun, yet it seems to have lasted for months already. Steef treats the season’s heat as an accelerant: people drive too fast, cause accidents, drink too much, and fight over nothing. His list gives the weather a social dimension, making the summer not just uncomfortable but associated with frayed restraint. Later, at thirty-five degrees, smog warnings advise children, older people, and those with asthma to stay indoors. The whole neighborhood adapts its schedule: caravans are washed in the evening, children become lively after sunset, and parents water gardens once the day’s heat has eased.

A Season That Narrows the Horizon

Summer plans are shaped by Steef’s trauma. He and Rebecca no longer vacation outside the Netherlands because travel once left Steef overwhelmed by fear. After visiting Rebecca’s mother, he could not sleep, watched those around him as though they were pursuing him, and thought people were speaking about him behind his back. Flashbacks returned from frightening experiences during his service with Dutchbat in Srebrenica. Rebecca would like to travel farther afield, to the Caribbean or Ibiza, but worries about leaving him alone during a post-traumatic episode.

Peter and Eva offer to keep an eye on Steef, but Rebecca does not feel able to rely on that arrangement. Steef instead presents the Netherlands and its beaches as the best destination, with their space and freedom. He persuades Peter to abandon the idea of riding a motorcycle to southern France. For Eva, staying nearby means avoiding a camping trip surrounded by apparently happy families and the prospect of spending two weeks alone in a tent with Peter. What sounds like a modest holiday decision therefore reflects a broader pattern: the couples’ movements and choices are constrained by distress, strained intimacy, and the lives they have imagined but not attained.

Heat and the Possibility of Renewal

The season does not carry one emotional meaning for everyone. After leaving a session with Hetty Vos, Peter drives with the window open and Guns N’ Roses playing. For the first time in years, he feels summer rather than merely passing through it. He wants to call Steef, meet at the beach, travel, cycle across the heath, dine out with Eva, find another job, and go to a concert. The sudden appetite for ordinary activities marks a change in his outlook: the world that seemed stopped begins to move again.

On the road, Peter understands his and Eva’s crisis as a consequence of losing confidence in choices they had once made together. They chose marriage and then chose to have a child; when conception did not happen, they entered medical treatment despite their earlier intention not to, and the multiplying decisions left them feeling lost. Peter concludes that they can stop grieving for what has not happened and choose adoption together. In this moment, the summer’s movement from a stalled life toward a new direction is expressed not as escape from the neighborhood, but as a decision about how to build a family within it.

The Body in the Heat

For Eva, the same weather presses directly on the body. While Peter and Steef are at a U2 concert, she lies at home, the house quiet after days of hearing the band’s music. The temperature makes her feel as though her skin is cooking; even a washcloth packed with ice does little to relieve her. She cannot bring herself to tidy the house or prepare food for Rebecca’s visit. Heat turns ordinary tasks into effort and leaves her alone with thoughts she cannot set aside.

Those thoughts center on a plan she and Rebecca have devised. Eva counts down to the coming weekend and her expected ovulation, while the physical discomfort of the hot afternoon sharpens her awareness of her own body. She touches her sunscreen-sticky legs and recalls Rebecca’s suggestion that she shave. In this strand of the summer, heat, desire, and reproductive timing converge: the season’s bodily intensity becomes the setting for a consequential plan, even as Peter’s experience of the same summer has opened toward adoption. The contrast gives the weather its central significance. It surrounds the couples with a shared, almost inescapable present, but their responses to that pressure lead in different directions.