Product Description

The D-day landings - the fate of 2.5 million men, 3000 landing craft and the entire future of Europe depends on the right weather conditions on the English Channel on a single day. A team of Allied scientists is charged with agreeing an accurate forecast five days in advance. But is it even possible to predict the weather so far ahead? And what is the relationship between predictability and turbulence, one of the last great mysteries of modern physics?

Wallace Ryman has devised a system that comprehends all of this - but he is a reclusive pacifist who stubbornly refuses to divulge his secrets. Henry Meadows, a young maths prodigy from the Met Office, is sent to Scotland to discover Ryman's system and apply it to the Normandy landings. But turbulence proves more elusive than anyone could have imagined, and events, like the weather, begin to spiral out of control.

From Giles Foden, prize-winning author of 'The Last King of Scotland', a gripping blend of fact and fiction in a novel about how human beings deal with uncertainty.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44772 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

The search for coherency
I'm not going to repeat the plot since that is adequately covered by other reviewers and the Amazon blurb, and, anyway, this isn't a plot heavy novel. Intelligent and thoughtful, at heart this is a meditation on the impossible search for coherency and an overwhelming meaning and stability in life.

The narrator, Henry Meadows, is a young Cambridge academic caught up in the war effort and the attempt to predict the weather to facilitate the D-day landings. He believes in a formula which can neutralise the unexpected, the arbitrary messiness of real life, but learns that it is only the unpredictable which is predictable.

I'd never read any Foden before, and was impressed with his ability to convey character and the nuances of personality through his narrator's voice. Meadows is awkward, intellectually intelligent and yet somewhat socially inept, and seems to fit the period perfectly.

The research is also extremely impressive. Foden walks the tight-rope of conveying the intricacies and impossibilities of high-level maths/physics, without alienating the reader. In fact the way we (most of us, I would guess) cannot engage with the maths is itself important, conveying the impenetrability of the problem and, by association, telling us something about Meadows himself.

But if the atmosphere, register and tone of the book is flawless, sadly the novel as a whole isn't. While this is quietly compelling it lacks that certain something which turns a good novel into a great one. Perhaps it's that the characters aren't quite gripping enough, or that the scenario is ever so slightly artificial, an attempt to write up the importance of Meadows' work? I'm not sure, but while I enjoyed this book greatly, I could easily have stopped reading at any point without having a compelling need to finish it.

So overall a fine work with some excellent writing. But it didn't make me desperate to read the Foden back catalogue.

A very good book
This is a very recommendable book.

I must say that I found the first 70 pages or so somewhat hard going, but the book hit its stride after that and I found it contemplative, involving, thoughtful and in places exciting. Set in the period before D-Day its main protagonist is a meteorologist charged with trying to predict the weather necessary for the invasion. It has interesting things to say about attitudes to war, the sheer strain of responsibility, what it is like to be a slightly gauche young man and the difficulty of weather forecasting.

The writing is excellent. Told in the first person it catches the character of its narrator very well and, unusually, manages to convey something of the delight and passion of mathematical discovery. After a long while of searching, thinking and struggle there is a quite extraordinary passage toward the book's climax (pages 311-316 in the hardback edition) where the straightforward prose suddenly becomes extremely poetic, full of ringing phrases, some original, some from Homer, Matthew Arnold and others, and in these pages a great mathematical and scientific realisation comes to the narrator. I thought it the best evocation of that process and the feelings associated with it that I know. It is a phenomenally difficult thing to capture: the long periods of immersion, frustration, turning a problem over and subconscious developments and finally (if you're lucky) a sudden realisation and synthesis of something you just *know* to be right. This isn't all the book has to recommend it, but for me it's what makes it special.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes an involving, thoughtful and thought-provoking read.

Variable to Good
Having neither read Giles Foden before, or seen the last king of scotland, I arrived at turbulence without preconceptions. I was interested in the subject and had never really thought about the detail that went into the planning of the D-Day invasion.

So it has all the right ingredients for a brit to enjoy, war, intrigue, conflict, weather and a sort of bumbling hero type.

I will leave other reviewers to go into the detail of the story ... what I found was an enjoyable (if sometimes heavy going) factual novel that manages to fill in some of what it was like to live during the war. My wife is doing her family tree and was interested in some of the snipets I read out.

I quite like the bumbing 'anti-hero' approach that obviously comes good in the end (with a little help).

I read the book on a two week holiday on the beach ... I thought it was perfect for that and has been returned to my bookshelf covered in suntan and sand stains. If you are expecting deep and insightful, maybe this isn't the book for you. If you want an entertaining read whilst gently toasting on a beach ... I thought it was great.