History of the Rain
A Novel
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- $249.00
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- $249.00
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. That's how it seems to me, being alive for a little while, the teller and the told.
So says Ruthie Swain. The bedridden daughter of a dead poet, home from college after a collapse (Something Amiss, the doctors say), she is trying to find her father through stories--and through generations of family history in County Clare (the Swains have the written stories, from salmon-fishing journals to poems, and the maternal MacCarrolls have the oral) and through her own writing (with its Superabundance of Style). Ruthie turns also to the books her father left behind, his library transposed to her bedroom and stacked on the floor, which she pledges to work her way through while she's still living.
In her attic room, with the rain rushing down the windows, Ruthie writes Ireland, with its weather, its rivers, its lilts, and its lows. The stories she uncovers and recounts bring back to life multiple generations buried in this soil--and they might just bring her back into the world again, too.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playwright, novelist, and nonfiction writer Williams's (Four Letters of Love) new novel has a unique voice and a droll, comic tone that takes a surprising, serious turn. Ruthie Swain collapsed at college ("I have had Something Amiss, Something Puzzling, and We're Not Sure Yet"), and is now confined to her bed at home in Ireland. Her father was a poet who left her an enormous quantity of books when he died, and she tries to find her way back to him through those books. Ruthie has a self-deprecating view of herself and the world, as well as a wry sense of humor. She uses literature to orient herself, searching for and creating connections in theory, while keeping the world around her, and the adoring Vincent Cunningham, at arm's length. The novel's "big secret" is obvious early on, and, therefore, the reveal is more of a relief than a surprise. One never buys that Ruthie is really sick it comes across more as a Victorian lady's psychosomatic problem than actual illness, even when the doctors sigh and shake their heads over blood work and send her to Dublin for treatment. The energy, tone, and premise of the book work well; the decision to view Ruthie's experiences through the lens of literature pays off. And though the novel doesn't have a strong resolution, Williams makes so many good stylistic and storytelling choices that his latest is well worth the read.
