The Edge Online - Book Reviews: Graham Joyce

The Stormwatcher
Graham Joyce
Penguin paperback, 279 pages, £5.99
Reviewed by Andrew Hedgecock (1998)

I’ve had some pretty grim holidays with friends – the struggle to fit in with each other’s habits and the domestic claustrophobia eliciting unsuspected tensions and resentments. But they weren’t in the same league as the sojourn in the Dordogne at the heart of Graham Joyce’s unsettling novel.

James, an advertising executive, spends his holiday with Sabine, his French wife; their daughters Jessie and Beth; their old friend Matt and his partner, the laid-back but provocative Chrissie; and Rachel, the children’s piano tutor and former employee at James’ ad agency. They stay in a luxury villa with views of vine-covered terraces, cornfields, limestone outcrops, distant hills and the river Lot. But, in spite of the apparent serenity of the setting, it soon becomes clear their visit will be less than idyllic. Eleven year old Jessie is deeply troubled; prone to violent tantrums, sexually loaded chit-chat and strange lines of questioning. She is guided by her ‘instructor’, a shadowy figure she meets secretly and who poses a number of questions for the reader. Is this a figment of Jessie’s imagination? Someone she knows or a stranger? Male or female?

The unease created by Jessie’s psychological disturbance is amplified by the relationships of the five adults. James, plagued with vague concerns about his health, snipes at the less affluent Matt and bickers with the neurotic Sabine. Chrissie’s louche, upfront sexuality is seen as irresponsible and confrontational by the other women. Matt and Rachel seem reasonably relaxed and well-adjusted, but they too have their secrets, dilemmas and hang-ups. It soon becomes clear that everyone feels like an outsider. Each of them is a recognisable 1990s type, but Joyce’s rendition of their idiosyncrasies prevents them from veering into caricature.

On one level the book can be seen as a tragicomedy of manners, bringing together the worlds of Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter: the detailed perception of social nuance and middle-class misery blends with precise delineation of family hatreds, psychological disturbance, simmering eroticism and a vague sense of menace.

But Joyce isn’t confined to social observation: the story is enriched by his extravagant but controlled symbolism. Joyce is ploughing the same furrow as writers like Nicholas Royle, M John Harrison and Robert Holdstock, mapping his characters’ emotional trajectories onto oneiric, mythic and environmental transformations.

As the title suggests, the investigation is psycho-meteorological: Joyce’s evocation of landscape is splendid, but it’s climate that influences the mood of his characters and provides his metaphors. There’s an approaching storm, with secondary storms in flashback sequences and key scenes are played out in intense bursts. And lightning is linked to another vital symbol, the angel. There are angels in cemeteries, angels in cave paintings and several characters play the roles of angels of darkness and light. The reader’s apprehension of what’s going on shifts as the story develops; character development is oblique and provisional, versions of reality are constructed and obliterated. Opinions will vary on the fantasy elements: are they hallucinations, or do they carry the same weight as the more obviously ‘real’ segments? I would argue that there’s one indisputably supernatural event in the book and that the rest is up for discussion.

Ultimately, the reader’s approach to The Stormwatcher may be determined by personal disposition and previous reading habits. The unfolding plot and developing symbolism are inextricably connected, and to reveal too much about either could ruin the pleasure of this human, unflinchingly honest book.