Book review: Turbulence

This "highly accomplished" novel by the author of The Last King of Scotland is based on the story of the Allied effort to predict the weather ahead of the D-Day landings, said Phil Baker in the Sunday Times.

Henry Meadows, who works at the Met Office, is sent to spy on a reclusive scientist who may have worked out a mathematical formula for all sorts of predictions, including weather forecasts. Unfortunately, the scientist is a committed pacifist who is loath to contribute in any way to any war effort.

Turbulence is a "well orchestrated novel about the strange poetry of science". Granted, there is "intellectual meat" to this novel, and it has "well-drawn characters", said David Robson in the Sunday Telegraph. But the decision to fictionalise these important events, mixing fact with imagination, was a very bad one: "Foden is not enriching history, but impoverishing it."

Well, I thought the novel was "cleverly done", said Toby Clements in the Daily Telegraph. It also pulls off the considerable feat of telling a new story about D-Day. All in all, it is a "quietly unorthodox triumph".

Turbulence, by Giles Foden, 350pp (Faber, £16.99) The Week Bookshop £15.29 (incl p&p)