History of the Rain

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.