SMALL RAIN

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 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 A classic a dawn serenade a little miracle of exigent joy I ll be rereading it the rest of