Saturday, September 4, 2010

"Turbulence", by Giles Foden


"Turbulence' is an ambitious and original topic that fictionalises the debates between weather forecasters and strategists that preceded the D-Day Invasion.

The slow moving plot starts in the 1980's on an ice ship destined for the Middle East. The melancholic Henry Meadows reminisces and recounts his time spent during the war effort.

The story is narrated in the first person by Henry, a young Cambridge academic who was entrusted to develop a method that would allow the military commanders to choose the ultimate timing for the invasion. Sent to Scotland to establish an observation station, his first mission was to befriend and extract information from Wallace Ryman the author of a mathematical formula for calculating turbulence and eventually determine the best dates for the D-day landings. Meadow soon learned that instability and unpredictability are not limited to weather events.......

This novel is cleverly written, full of tension, emotions and melancholy throughout. The scientific and mathematical areas are handled with brilliance, it is not an easy feat keeping fiction readers captivated and interested on a subject that is profoundly science based. The degree of accuracy is irrelevant after all it is a fiction. This is also a character driven-plot where friction between intriguing and strong personalities plays an important part and is very well narrated. The story ends with a panorama of the D-Day landings and Henry in the middle of the action....surely an unexpected development for a civilian mathematician...

I enjoyed reading this different perspective of a very important time in history

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