Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future review – graphic storytelling reinvented

Lauren Redniss’s stunning cultural history of the weather is thrillingly original

From the frozen tundras of Svalbard, through London pea-soupers, to wildfires crackling across the Australian outback, Lauren Redniss has produced an irresistibly original account of the weather in all its glory and danger.This is natural science writing by means of highly visual storytelling: mini biographies of historical figures relevant to her subject – from Arctic explorer Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, through endurance swimmer Diana Nyad, to 19th-century ice exporter Frederic Tudor – history in anecdotal form and accounts of Redniss’s own travels, all stylishly rendered in a windswept typeset called Qaneq LR (named after the Inuktitut word for “falling snow”) created specially for this book. The end result is an inspired cultural history of the weather, the avenues of interest of which are multifarious enough to move from a consideration of Föhnkrankheit, the illness associated with the central European Föhn wind – “Judges in Switzerland have been known to consider wind as a mitigating factor in crimes committed during a Föhn” – to the ethics of geoengineering and meteorological warfare.

Rather than merely illustrating the text, the artwork lies at the heart of Thunder & Lightning, which is her third book. The “Sky” chapter, for example, is simply pages of boldly coloured vistas, no commentary necessary, while “Fog” plays wonderfully with shadow. Every page offers up exciting and affecting imagery, inspired by the “proto-surrealism” of 18th-century naturalist watercolour paintings and botanical engravings. Visually and imaginatively stunning (though a tad physically cumbersome), Redniss’s book reinvents graphic storytelling in thrillingly intrepid ways.

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