Sep 10

Sep 10 Small Rain

About the book

Author: Garth Greenwell
Publisher: FSG

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

Garth Greenwell may be one of those super-MFA-style writers, but he is one of the best to do it, and so we all happily gobble up his books. This one included. I read/listened to Small Rain in just a handful of sessions, engrossed as I was fully transported into the time, place, and mind of its narrator.

Small Rain offers a close look at a specific experience — a medical emergency and extended hospital stay, and during COVID to boot — that serves as a pathway for examining and honoring the experiences of love and life. Pulling from real-life experiences, Greenwell dives into the minutiae of being poked and prodded and cared for, which come together to comment on the foreignness of the body, the challenges of losing autonomy (even temporarily), the ways we take our everyday lives (and health) for granted, and the inevitable beauty of whatever love and life we’ve built.

I’ve heard that this book felt tedious to some people, but personally, I found it deeply relatable — I recently had a 3-day hospital stay after an unexpected C-section. Obviously my life was not in danger, as this book’s narrator’s is, but I found myself nodding along to the frequent vitals checks, the blood pressure cuff, the nurse call button, the challenges of using the bathroom independently, the feeling that you are now just a body, and the unique intimacy with nurses even amidst regular shift changes.

The audiobook is read by Greenwell himself, and it is excellent. He narrates in what I can only describe as an MFA-specific style of intonation (if you’ve heard it, you know), but it beautifully suits his flowing, near-musical prose. Highly recommend.