Small Rain

A New Statesman Book of the Year

''My book of the year . . . Rarely has illness made for such a compelling read'' – John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
''Marvelous: exceptionally vivid, real, and true'' – Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island
''Fundamentally about the beauty of life'' – Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
''Exquisite. Utterly mesmerizing'' - Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
''A fierce beautiful novel'' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
''Beautiful, evocative'' – The Times

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 a dysfunctional 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.

''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!