History of the Rain
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. In Faha, County Clare, everyone is a long story... Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil – via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain. The stories – of her golden twin brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged pursuit of the Swains' Impossible Standard and forever falling just short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland – pour forth in Ruthie's still, small, strong, hopeful voice. A celebration of books, love and the healing power of the imagination, this is an exquisite, funny, moving novel in which every sentence sings.
Reviews with the most likes.
I went into this book without many expectations, and I thoroughly enjoyed this meandering, lyrical journey. It's in parts a humorous take on the world and the story of many generations of the Swain family. It's also a very tragic book that touches on how people handle grief in different ways, and how nature and the world around us play into that.
I also enjoyed how each of the “main” characters - Abraham, Virgil, and Ruth - have to reconcile their realities with their interests, and how they manage to do so. The result is wryly funny.
I knocked a star off because the meandering - while evocative of the very rain and rivers that come up so frequently in the book - eventually wore me down a bit and I felt like it became unruly.
