THE WEATHERMAN

A phlegmatic Alabaman innocent encounters illogic, mendacity, and lethal ambition.

Taylor Wakefield’s troubles (related in his meandering nonsequential narrative) begin in 1963 when, aged 11, he inadvertently witnesses the murder of a black saloonkeeper by his sociopathic adult cousin Billy Hatcher (“the most dangerous limb on the family tree”), and is frightened into silence. Years pass (looping around one another, in Taylor’s remembering), and Our Hero reaches the finals of the National Spelling Bee, losing to his cute female opponent, turns failure to brief fame on a tacky phone-in quiz show, survives his parents’ marital breakup, and drifts. The plot gathers shape when Taylor is hired as a (totally unqualified) weatherman by Montgomery-based radio-TV network Alacast (“a bottom-feeding news operation known for its gross inaccuracies and its growing number of pending lawsuits”). McCown’s summary of Taylor’s embattled adjustment to a bewildering multiplicity of tasks at understaffed Alacast is sitcom stuff. But things darken and grow more interesting when Taylor uses his “forum” as meteorologist-commentator to utter cryptic warnings about the political rise of aforementioned Cousin Billy, who’s been born again, reconstructed himself as an assistant attorney general, and is now reopening the case of the 15-year-old murder he himself committed. The resulting battle of wits steamrolls when Taylor reconnects with former Spelling Bee foe Alissa Powell, now a novice nun burdened by anger-management issues—and climaxes in a problem-solving confrontation with endlessly resourceful and duplicitous Cousin Billy. The Weatherman lives and dies by Taylor’s agreeably wry voice. There’s a little of Walker Percy’s self-deprecating Binx Bolling (of The Moviegoer) in him—though not enough to compensate for this story’s numerous improbabilities.

A loopy and likable third outing (after War Memorials, 2000, etc.), but insubstantial and unconvincing.