Michael Gorey

I bought a couple of books yesterday and started reading last night for the first time in several months. Unfortunately I’m not off to a good start with Second Time Around by "international best seller" Mary Higgins Clark.

The plot starts in shaky fashion with irate shareholders protesting the collapse of a company. Nothing unusual about that, except Clark portrays them as having invested for altruistic reasons to support a cancer cure. On what planet would that happen?

She blew me away though with this second-rate description of New York’s weather in April: "The sun was shining and the sky was intensely blue. The few clouds overhead were like puffs of white cushions".

Imagine how dull that sentence would have been if the sky had been plain blue instead of "intensely" blue. What’s the difference anyway?

It made me ponder other examples of authors who have captured my praise or indifference based on their weather reports.

Peter Temple irritated me with multiple references to Melbourne being grey, wet and cold. The sun does shine in Melbourne and its winters are probably the warmest in Victoria.

A typical example from Bad Debts: "A weak sun was shining on Melbourne, but to compensate a marrow-chilling wind was blowing." Not bad, except for repetition throughout the book and lack of relevance. A few pages later: "It was another sour day, full of wind and rain."

Melbourne could do with more of that wet stuff and so could most of Australia.

Kathy Reichs does a good job in Deja Dead of describing Montreal’s weather: "When summer arrives in Montreal it flounces in like a rumba dancer: all ruffles and bright cotton, with flashing thighs and sweat-slicked skin."

She goes on: "It is a ribald celebration … the season is embraced and relished." This is good writing, paints a picture of Montreal and is relevant to the extent that weather influences mood.

The master of climatic scene setting is James Lee Burke.

Describing a storm in Heaven’s Prisoners he writes: "I watched the flooded willow trees bend in the wind, and the moss on the dead cypress in the bays straighen and fall, and the way the sunlight danced and shattered on the water when the surface suddenly wrinkled from one shore to the next."

In the same book, to emphasise heat in the Atchafalaya Swamp: "Turkey buzzards floated high on the updrafts against the white sky. I could smell dead fish in the lily pads and cattails that grew along the shore."

I like the way Burke not only gives a weather report, but conveys the impact that weather has on his senses. I plucked that book at random from eight of his that I have on the shelf. He takes me to Louisiana and make me wish I could visit places I would otherwise never contemplate going to.

I just think that if authors want to set a scene with weather reports they should either be brief or relevant, preferably both.

These articles might be of interest:

• The Fifth Woman
• Blue Rag Range
• Kathy Reichs