Stormy Weather

by Michael Meehan

In a tiny country town in northwest Victoria in 1955, the year before the introduction of television, a troupe of vaudeville artists arrive to give a concert. Their impact on each other -- and the inhabitants of the town -- over a single 24-hour period of almost continuous rain, reveals exhausted hopes, secret dreams, plots of betrayal and anarchic optimism.

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Michael Meehan’s novels –The Salt of Broken Tears, Deception, Below the Styx and Stormy Weather – have been shortlisted for and won many awards and have also been published internationally. He is an Emeritus Professor at Deakin University and was for many years the chair of Adelaide Writers Week. He currently lives in Adelaide, South Australia

Reviews

[Kitty Maloona]

Fascinating little novel - novella really I suppose - read it in one sitting. The structure was clever; the slow build up to the performance and its aftermath so compellingly done, as was the description of the no-time, the vacuum of boredom and tension that characterise the wait performers endure before a performance. The characters are a rag-tag of emotionally-charged misfits, each battling a gruelling loneliness and sense of dislocation from everything and everyone, but struggling each in his or her own way to survive. The gorgeous language used to evoke the atmosphere of torrential rain and a soaked landscape was mesmerising; the author found a thousand different ways in which to describe water. The final absolution and redemption was unexpected and beautifully crafted. I see it as an existential study of lost beings flung by events, fate, circumstances, into this maelstrom, this terminus, paradoxically a parochial, hopeless little joke of a town, where all will be either broken forever or somehow miraculously rescued. This book will be added to my collection to be enjoyed again.

[Cate]

In my view, a pretty average book. Far too wordy - I mean some sentences were a paragraph in themselves. There's nothing wrong with a few full stops here & there. The character of "Rabbiter" was not "subversive" - he was perverse & cruel. I cheered when he got beaten up by Lucille, the digruntled gymnist. The story is set over one day in north-west Victoria (Australia) where this rag-tag theatre troupe (for want of a better description) are performing a Charity Concert. It just did not hold my interest.

[Karen Hunt]

Interesting story but a bit slow