The Stormwatcher

James and his French wife Sabine hire a remote villa in the Dordogne for a holiday with their two children Jessie and Beth and friends Matt, Chrissie and Rachel. The house, and its surrounding landscape, are beautiful with fields of sunflowers and corn and the local caves are mysterious and strange. The holiday should be idyllic, but the friends are mismatched and James' arrogant behaviour soon causes friction. As the days progress, Jessie, who already suffers from unpredictable emotions, becomes ever more impulsive and erratic. Sabine begins to suspect that Jessie's mind is being poisoned by a member of the party who is filling her daughter with strange, magical ideas and stealing her away. As Sabine tries to identify the culprit, tensions in the group increase and the storm clouds gather. The cracks in the group begin to widen and civility gives way to anger, revealing painful secrets with tragic consequences.This remarkable, fine and almost unclassifiable book is a complete breath of fresh air'. Goodreads'Stormy emotions and turbulent revelations charge the tense atmosphere of this cunning exercise in magic realism'. Publishers WeeklyA powerhouse of a novel, calling to mind the work and styles of D. H. Lawrence and Graham Swift and the downbeat mysteries and the human flotsam and jetsam characters from the likes of Barbara Vine. Work of this stature and calibre that can only bode well for the future – both Joyce’s and that of the entire field - and I commend it to you unreservedly’. Interzone'A taut psychological thriller'. Library Thing'My awe for Graham Joyce is growing by the book’. Amazon

From Publishers Weekly

Stormy emotions and turbulent revelations charge the tense atmosphere of this cunning exercise in magic realism, first published in the U.K. as a paperback original in 1998. Set in the French countryside, it presents the daily interactions of a group of British travelers who discover that vacationing together is no holiday. James, the outing organizer, is an arrogant prat who spends most of the trip demeaning his easygoing friend Matt; Matt's wife, Chrissie; and Rachel, an ex-mistress whom James has asked along to help his wife, Sabine, supervise their two girls. As friction among them intensifies, the lies and self-deceptions that have kept them civil give way to truths that emerge as a shadowy alternate reality. The novel's building emotional tempest is catalyzed by Jessie, James and Sabine's precocious preteen daughter, who secretly converses with a mysterious, seemingly invisible adult instructor. The identity of this instructor is the key to unlocking the narrative's occasional sidesteps into fantasy. Though his characters sometimes seem too self-aware to behave so meanly, Joyce (The Facts of Life) gives them solid psychological grounding and uses every detail of the external environment-from primitive paintings in a nearby cave to the increasingly ominous weather-as a carefully crafted corollary to their states of mind. Readers who have savored his recent excursions into mainstream fantasy will find this early tale a piquant foretaste. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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