The Rain Heron
Winner of the Age Book of the Year
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4.3 • 50 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading—and forgetting.
But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a local myth, Ren is inexorably drawn into her impossible mission.
As their lives entwine, unravel and erupt—as myths merge with reality—both Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love, and what they fear.
Robbie Arnott’s stunning second novel remakes our relationship with the natural world. The Rain Heron is equal parts horror and wonder, and utterly gripping.
Robbie Arnott was a 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist and won the Margaret Scott Prize in the 2019 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes. His widely acclaimed debut, Flames (2018), was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and Not the Booker Prize. He lives in Hobart.
‘Robbie Arnott is singlehandedly reinventing Australian literature. The Rain Heron is a soaring feat of the imagination.’ Bram Presser
‘A book that is not only a compelling, original read, but one that delivers hard truths that urgently need to be heard.’ Books+Publishing
‘Arnott’s vision coalesces into an affecting narrative, charged with symbolism and characters who hold trauma, pain and cruelty in the same space…As in his previous novel, Flames, Arnott is uncommonly adept at imbuing his work with a rich, lived-in feel, a world close to our own, filled with parallel myths and coinciding calamities. And as he did in Flames, Arnott reminds us he is one of the best prose stylists currently working in Australia…His is a lyrical, natural style that combines the expansiveness of a fable with fully realised detail. Arnott’s sentences are truly a pleasure to read and the characters finely studied.’ Saturday Paper
‘The Rain Heron is literary art. Robbie Arnott has deftly crafted an audacious idea into an original, compelling work…Flames is shrouded in a gothic, macabre Tasmanian setting. I thought it brilliant. The Rain Heron is even better…Arnott blends his genres impeccably. Nothing is overdone or superfluous…When the northerner, the seeker of squid ink, views a painting of the ocean, he is entranced by the quality and depth of its brightness and texture. It is “an artwork laced with ink”, a perfect metaphor for this luminous tale.’ Australian
‘An intuitive understanding of fauna and flora and humankind’s problematic, often violent relationship with nature…Written with economy and grace, The Rain Heron is a timeless and poignant meditation on our fragile relationship with the natural environment.’ Guardian
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In an age of rising ecological anxiety, there is no better time to dive into the strange, surreal world of Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron. Set in the wake of a disastrous coup d’etat, the book follows a female soldier and older woman as they search for an otherworldly creature known as the rain heron. In less skilled hands, this mythological fable could feel heavy handed, but Arnott’s deft control of language and memorable imagery allow him to slip seamlessly between brutal realism and the fantastical. The follow-up to the Tasmanian author’s award-winning debut Flames, this is an enchanting novel that urges us to reckon with our fraught relationship with the natural world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Arnott's vibrant and violent latest (after Flames) follows two women on their hunt for a mythical creature in the aftermath of a violent military coup. After a folkloric sketch about a legendary rain heron's ability to grant both bounty and destruction, Arnott shifts to Ren, an older woman living on a mountain whose quiet life is interrupted by the arrival of army lieutenant Zoe Harker, a veteran of the coup. Zoe has been ordered to capture the rain heron, and she tries to force Ren to reveal the bird's location. Ren resists, leading to a fight in which Zoe loses an eye. Flashbacks flesh out Zoe's childhood in a seaside town, where a stranger kills Zoe's aunt for defying him, an episode that leads Zoe to realize, in the present, that she's become the invader. As Zoe continues the search for the rain heron with Ren in tow and her medic, Daniel, tending to both women's wounds, Arnott describes mythic scenery ("Soon after entering these wild fields the road doglegged, and over this bend Daniel saw the river's death"). Though the plot doesn't always hang together, Arnott fascinates with fable-like stories and thoughtful meditations on the consequences of lessons learned too late. The beautiful imagery and magical moments carry the reader through an occasionally bumpy journey.
Customer Reviews
A rare talent
4.5 stars
Author
Thirty-something Tasmanian advertising copywriter (he's still working), whose first novel, Flames (2018), won or was nominated for, a slew of literary awards in 2019. It featured special coffins to stop the dead from rising and river gods partial to vandalising jet skis, among other things. While not perfect, it was certainly different and held the attention of at least one grumpy old white guy who's no fan of magic realism. This is Mr Arnott's sophomore effort.
Precis
The setting is a dystopian near future in an unnamed country that bears more than a passing resemblance to Tasmania, an increasingly popular setting for dystopian tales on both page and screen. In the first part (Part 0), Mr Arnott uses fable to introduce the titular heron, a myth of his own imagining that is made out of water but transmogrifies a fair bit, messes about with the weather and the climate, and is partial to plucking out the occasional eye from transgressive humans. In the second part (part 1), we meet Ren, a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, I'm guessing, who flees a coup in the aforementioned unnamed country to live the life of a hermit on a mountainside not far from the rain heron's place. A troop of soldiers under the command of a ruthless female lieutenant named Harker makes Ren's life a misery until she takes them to the mythical bird, which they capture after some bloodshed and ocular injury. In the third part (part 2), we flash back 20 years and meet a gal named Zoe who lives with her aunt on the the south coast where they harvest ink from giant squid in a somewhat metaphysical way that spares the squid. The ink is in high demand due to its myriad properties. Then one day the ink market tanks, and the town with it. With me, so far? In Part 3 (the fourth part), we go on a road trip with a med student conscripted as a medic in the army as he and the above mentioned Lt Harker (first name Zoe, surprise, surprise) deliver the captured mythical bird to an animal sanctuary that contains no animals. In the final section, Mr Arnott pulls all of this together. I know what you're going to say. I didn't believe he could do it either, but he did. So there.
Writing
The prose is crisp and precise enough to make the non-linear swirling plot readily accessible. Pacing is good. Mr Arnott keeps the navel gazing to a minimum and reins in the magic in the second half of the book, which allows his extraordinarily well drawn characters do their thang. At first blush, this is a redemption story with an underlying environmental message, and worth reading just to experience Mr Arnott's unique gifts as a story teller. I suspect re-reading would uncover more layers.
Bottom line
Notwithstanding the above comments, this was a more traditional narrative than Flames, which is probably why I liked it better. Mr Arnott is a rare talent with an impressive imagination.