Title: Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
Book Beginnings quote:
They asked me to describe the pain, but the pain defied description, on a scale of one to ten it demanded a different scale. It was like someone had plunged a hand into my gut and grabbed hold and yanked, trying to turn me inside out and failing and trying again.Like that, while somebody else kneed me in the groin.
Friday56 quote: [Where the narrator is remembering a conversation with his high school class about a favorite untitled poem written in old English, focusing on these two unparsable lines: "Weston wynde, when wyll thow blow, / The smalle rayne downe can Rayne."]:
Imagine the speaker. What is the small rain, isn't it beautiful, the weird adjective, how can rain be small; and does he want it, the speaker of the poem, does he long for the rain, is that how we should understand the cracked syntax, and isn't the poem more beautiful for it, for the difficulty, for the way we can't quite make sense of it, settled sense, I mean, for how it won't stay still...
Summary:
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 (Publisher).
Review: An unnamed teacher and poet finds himself at the mercy of the healthcare system during the COVID pandemic -- in pain, frightened, alone, confused, and scared. When he is admitted to ICU he still doesn't know what is happening to him and his life is out of his control. In the weeks he is in the hospital there are small moments of beauty, however, where he finds himself thinking about some piece of music, art, or a poem. For example, at one point he and a nurse find themselves talking about madrigal music they like. The nurse pulls out his phone and cues up a song and they listen together in a special moment. Another time during a procedure he thinks back to a lesson he had with his high school students where they discussed the poem "Smalle Rayne" (Small Rain). I always enjoy finding the title in the text of a book. And here it is.
The healthcare specifics made me wonder if the author had had a similar experience in the ICU, if not he really did very specific, excellent research. The patient is a gay man, and some of the discussions that occured as the doctors attempted to figure out the cause so they could properly treat the man made me feel a little uncomfortable. But I had to keep reminding myself to not be a prude. (This said by me, a person who nearly faints if anyone talks about teeth or dental issues may explain my squeamishness.)
I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author. When I looked at the Friday56 quote (from page 47) I was relieved that I chose the format I did. It drives me crazy when authors don't use quotation marks and, in this case, use big long run-on sentences, a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, thoughts separated by semicolons. When I listened to this quote I was captivated by it but when I looked at I didn't feel the same way.
That said, the books' prose and structure were so beautiful. The story was really elevated by the writing. The author read the audiobook. I would recommend that format.
Rating: 5 stars.
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