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A medical crisis brings one man close to death – and to love, art, and beauty – in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell.
A poet’s life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.
This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value – art, memory, poetry, music, care – are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.
Author: Garth Greenwell
Trade Paperback Published 31 December 2024 320 pages
Read and Recommended by Graeme:
"This is Garth Greenwell’s third novel and it recently won the prestigious PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction. Though the book is a major departure from his two earlier intensely erotic novels. Sex is not a priority for the narrator of Small Rain who is in the hospital ICU for most of the narrative with a life-threatening condition. At one point he even wonders if he will ever get his sex drive back! Like his previous books, this is an auto-fiction - loosely based on Greenwell’s own experiences - and it is a thoroughly compelling read. It is set against the Covid years and so a hospital admission comes with all sorts of complications - mandated masks, limitations on visitors, intense demand for hospital beds and care, and of course the fear of contracting Covid on top of an already serious illness. The narrator delays going to hospital despite the intense pain he was in due to the concern that it was more dangerous there because of Covid! His case turns out to be an unusual one - a tear to the inner wall of his aorta - and doctors, students, and specialists flock to his bedside, fascinated by the case. It is something usually seen in older patients and can be instantly fatal. At one point they wonder if contracting syphilis years ago in Bulgaria led to the condition, a theory they eventually decide against. Supporting the narrator through this ordeal is his Spanish boyfriend, L, and the intensity of their bond through this gruelling situation is beautifully portrayed. Small Rain is somewhat reminiscent of gay novels/memoirs from the 1980s and 1990s which related the devastating stories of gay men succumbing to bewildering infections brought on by HIV/AIDS. However, thankfully this book has a happy ending and becomes an affirmation and appreciation of life and what can so often be taken be granted - good health."
'A classic, a dawn serenade, a little miracle of exigent joy. I'll be rereading it the rest of my life' - Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
'Marvelous: exceptionally vivid, real, and true' – Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island
'Fundamentally about the beauty of life' – Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
'A fierce beautiful novel' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater