Appropriately titled Forecast: Turbulence (HarperCollins), the tales within are distillations of upheaval and violence (both physical and emotional) whose protagonists are swept along by events that threaten to overwhelm them; sisters living with the shame of their father's sins, a lonely young man who becomes obsessed with a beautiful neighbour, the disintegration of family after the disappearance of a child.
In an inversion of the Joycean epiphany through stillness, the tension builds inexorably through each story, culminating in the sudden calmness found at the eye of the storm.
This structure is echoed in the arrangement of the collection. In contrast to the disturbing and shocking stories that precede it, the final piece is a slice of memoir centred about the rivers that have flown through her family's history, and the fact that nothing in our lives remains fixed. Yet somehow in the midst of turbulence we somehow find equilibrium. This is the achievement that these stories celebrate, each in their own way.
- Dr McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
