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Rain
Twelve-year-old Janey and her younger brother, Jim, spend summers at a lake with their parents. Ignored for long stretches and then called upon suddenly to mix drinks or receive drunken kisses, the children huddle together in tender, compulsive closeness. Nourished only by their devotion to one another, the two fill their neglected hours exploring the lush, dangerous landscape and protecting each other from the unpredictable moods of the dark adult world that surrounds them.
95 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 1994
5 people are currently reading
404 people want to read
About the author
Kirsty Gunn
38books55followersKirsty Gunn was born in 1960 in New Zealand and educated at Queen Margaret College and Victoria University, Wellington, and at Oxford, where she completed an M.Phil. After moving to London she worked as a freelance journalist.
Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; The Keepsake (1997), the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories; and Featherstone (2002), a story concerned with love in all its variety. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).
She is also author of This Place You Return To Is Home (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary. Her latest books are The Boy and the Sea (2006), winner of the 2007 Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award; and 44 Things (2007), a book of personal reflections over the course of one year.
Kirsty Gunn lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; The Keepsake (1997), the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories; and Featherstone (2002), a story concerned with love in all its variety. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).
She is also author of This Place You Return To Is Home (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary. Her latest books are The Boy and the Sea (2006), winner of the 2007 Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award; and 44 Things (2007), a book of personal reflections over the course of one year.
Kirsty Gunn lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
April 24, 2017
Terminei este livro num dia em que o tempo refletia exatamente o ambiente da história que é contada - céu nublado, cheiro a terra molhada e a ameaça de que vai desatar a chover a qualquer momento, sem que tal se resolva acontecer... A escrita é muito boa, o ambiente pesado, sentimos que a desgraça pode acontecer a qualquer momento, mas o suspense é mantido até ao limite. Gostei bastante, por tudo isto, mas ainda assim, como dizem os ingleses, este género não é o meu "cup of tea". 3,5 estrelas, arredondadas para 4, e agora vou ali ajustar as que dei ao Tempo entre Costuras, que fui sovina...
February 5, 2019
“Rain�, by Kirsty Gunn, is 95 pages. My little paper copy fits sweetly in the palms of my hand.
Twelve year old Janey, looked after her younger brother, Jimmy when they were children one summer when her parents rented a summer lake house for them in New Zealand.
Janey and her little brother used to go out into the summer rain. They were either disappearing or returning they were going into the water. Their parents were around - in the background- but the mystery of their family dynamics was unsettling & puzzling.
“Out across the river rain fell, from behind the hills, rain. Rain into water, rain on leaves. Raindrops dripping from the white blossom of tea trees, rain sliding down the muddy channels of riverbank, rain on us. We let it do that, cover us, the sky would weep.mMy little brother tilted his face up to the last at the light and closed his eyes. Under the water he was transparent�.
What wasn’t transparent....were the perceptions of Janey. She interweaves her 12-year-old voice with her mature adult voice. She expresses her feelings in ways that are emotionless - yet, somehow we know that this specific summer left long psychological scars.
Poetic type lyrical writing ..... taut - angelic dreamlike feelings - sweet & pungent.
I liked it.....mesmerizing short quiet read with a cup of tea.
3 strong stars.
Twelve year old Janey, looked after her younger brother, Jimmy when they were children one summer when her parents rented a summer lake house for them in New Zealand.
Janey and her little brother used to go out into the summer rain. They were either disappearing or returning they were going into the water. Their parents were around - in the background- but the mystery of their family dynamics was unsettling & puzzling.
“Out across the river rain fell, from behind the hills, rain. Rain into water, rain on leaves. Raindrops dripping from the white blossom of tea trees, rain sliding down the muddy channels of riverbank, rain on us. We let it do that, cover us, the sky would weep.mMy little brother tilted his face up to the last at the light and closed his eyes. Under the water he was transparent�.
What wasn’t transparent....were the perceptions of Janey. She interweaves her 12-year-old voice with her mature adult voice. She expresses her feelings in ways that are emotionless - yet, somehow we know that this specific summer left long psychological scars.
Poetic type lyrical writing ..... taut - angelic dreamlike feelings - sweet & pungent.
I liked it.....mesmerizing short quiet read with a cup of tea.
3 strong stars.
October 30, 2018
**spoilers ahead, please be warned**
Published in 1994, and adapted into a New Zealand film in 2001, "Rain" is the literary debut novel by Kirsty Gunn. I didn't enjoy this short, plotless, meandering book, but my friend Lynn thinks this is a strong novel, and we had a good discussion about the storytelling choices and why this book works so well for her.
The story is told in first person, from the perspective of the protagonist, Janey, who is looking back on the summer when she was twelve. Janey's parents are upper-middle class white folks who own a summer lake house, and they host raucous parties for their adult friends each night. Janey and her five-year-old brother, Jim, are mostly left to care for themselves through the summer. They spend their days wandering the marshland around the lake, playing in some kind of estuary or confluence, where they swim, fish, build sand castles or mud castles, sit in a sailboat they can't sail, and just pass the time with each other.
It was never made clear how old Janey is as the narrator looking back on this summer, a summer which turns out to be an extremely traumatic time in her life. Based upon the naive and uninformed statements Janey makes in this book, I would guess she is only twenty or maybe thirty as the narrator, or possibly still a teenager, age 18 or 19. She doesn't seem to have received any therapy to help her process what happened, and she makes no statements in the book to orient the reader to her current mindset in any satisfying or enlightening way. The purpose of this book is to narrate the long days of her summer that lead to the final pages of the book, when sudden devastation and trauma occurs. The book ends at the very moment a plot seems to arrive.
I had originally assumed Janey's 12th summer took place in the early 1990s, but after talking with my friend Lynn, I realized the author had set the story in the early 1970s. Ms. Gunn was born in 1960, so she would have turned twelve herself in 1972. Given that knowledge, it does make sense that this novel is set in 1972, though the text itself never provides any dates. The author also grew up in New Zealand, so I believe the novel is set in New Zealand, though the text itself never gives specific setting details. Nature, and the lake environment around the house, is given a lot of description in this short book, but I did not realize the novel was set in New Zealand until after I finished the book and researched the author.
According to my friend Lynn, a reader can look at all of the long, plotless exposition of the natural world in "Rain," which makes up the bulk of this book, and understand it to be a detailed metaphor for Janey's adult interior self: she is awash in a numbed state of emotion, living in a perpetual state of lassitude after what has happened to her. She has been unable to process or come to grips with her trauma, and she is narrating the earliest phase of her journey of healing, wherein she gives voice to the traumatic event, and nothing more. This explains why the book ends just as the plot appears, or just at the moment when the traumatic event occurs, because the adult Janey is finally leaving her state of numbness and/or denial to acknowledge that something terrible happened to her when she was twelve.
If you are someone who likes funeral scenes in movies that take place in the rain on gray, stormy days, scenes that use the environment to represent the emotion of grief so that the characters never have to name any of their feelings at all, then you will enjoy "Rain" a lot more than I did. After reflecting at length on this book, I have decided I do not enjoy books that rely solely on the natural setting to instruct the reader on a character's emotional state. It feels cheap to me. It feels like shoddy prose.
The film version of "Rain" drew attention to things that I completely misread or failed to pay close attention to in the narrative. In the movie, Janey is older than twelve, more sexually aware of herself, and she is competing with her mother for the attention of the adult men who show up at her parents' house parties. There was nothing like that in the novel. In the book, Janey has no narrated awareness of her sexuality, but there is one adult who does: an adult man comes into the bedroom Janey shares with her brother late one night, and while the reader fears the man is coming to rape Janey, Janey's mother quickly appears and leads the man away. The man doesn't appear on the page again until the final pages in the book, when he suddenly shows up at the lake, while Janey and her brother are playing outside.
The man leads Janey into some bushes, where it's clear they have sex, though the act isn't described on the page. Then the books shifts into second person, in which the "you" addressed to the reader is trying to save a small unnamed child who has drowned. The prose is focused and determined, going through the ordeal of performing CPR on a child, but is as emotionally detached as it is detailed. The reader is meant to understand that this is Janey's extremely traumatized way of telling the reader that her little brother drowned and she tried to save him by performing CPR, but she was unable to resuscitate him.
Near the end of the book, on page 80, Lynn drew my attention to some lines I had clearly misread. It is a scene in which 12-year-old Janey is interacting with her mother, and then describing her mother's perfume and makeup for the reader, but the narrative quickly changes direction:
"All her things were laid out there before the mirror. I touched them, the thick creams in jars, tissues blotted red with colour. I unstopped the bottle of her fragrance and the sharp, sweet smell came up at me again, adult.
'Come here, honey...'
Her things were warm to the touch. The creams, the lotions. I could spread them on my own skin.
'Don't be shy...'
It was just once at first, letting myself be taken, then more times, over and over until it was me myself going back for more. Leaving my family, leaving my little brother playing while the tides in the river were rising."
I had completely failed to understand that this text was telling the reader that Janey had begun having sex with the adult man who first crept into her bedroom at night, that they had engaged in sexual intercourse many times, and that was why Janey chose to have sex with him on the day her brother drowned.
Lynn said that this adult man must have been grooming Janey for sex, but the extent of his manipulations of Janey are limited to the passage I've quoted above. I don't think that text is being clear about this man's predatory behavior and rape of a child; instead, the narrative focuses on Janey's choice to have sex with him of her own volition.
While I understand that many rape victims do engage in this type of thinking -- psychologically, it is untenable to many people to have no control over their lives and be purely victimized by other people, and the human mind prefers to think we have control in situations where we really had none -- as a reader, I don't get any sense of Janey's victimization from this text. From an objective distance, i.e. as a thinking adult reading this book, I know that Janey is twelve and that this man was a pedophile and a rapist, but the first-person protagonist narrating this tale is the voice of a legally-adult woman who is telling the reader that she "chose to have sex" with this man on the day that her brother died. There is a disconnect going on in the narrative, and it feels like deliberate obfuscation.
I can understand grooming, pedophilia, and rape, but none of those terms are used in this book, and if Lynn hadn't pointed that specific passage out to me after I had finished the book, I would have assumed this adult man had just shown up to rape Janey, and while he was raping her, Janey's little brother drowned.
Knowing that Janey chose to have sex with this adult man more than once adds to my understanding that she would probably blame herself even more for her brother's death, but this novel is not about the aftermath of Jim's drowning at all. The book does not discuss matters of grief, blame, shame, or guilt. The author chose for the natural environment to express to the reader that Janey is traumatized, and shortly after the reader learns Janey was unable to revive her drowned brother, the book ends. Janey finishes narrating her story by returning to the same type of storytelling she began the book with, in which she and her brother are playing at the lake again, before he died:
"In rain we could take off our clothes and walk down the beach and into the lake in one continuous gliding movement. There was no telling where land ended, waves began. Sand and water dissolved into each other, blotted in mist. Nothing else existed on those days except two children. Watch them. Two with the whole beach to themselves, the whiteness of cloud and water swirling at their feet as they dance, round and around, round and around... With each turn becoming smaller, further away, smaller and smaller in the distance until you can't see them at all." (page 95)
If this type of storytelling and focus on nature-as-metaphor for a character's emotional landscape sounds like a good read to you, then you should check out this book.
Personally, I did not enjoy this novel at all, and I would have DNF'd after a few pages if I hadn't agreed to buddy-read this book with my friend. I'm glad that I finished the book only because I enjoyed talking about the novel with her, and I appreciated that she was able to tell me about the movie and how it differs from the book. Aside from that enjoyable conversation experience, I found this book utterly pointless.
Published in 1994, and adapted into a New Zealand film in 2001, "Rain" is the literary debut novel by Kirsty Gunn. I didn't enjoy this short, plotless, meandering book, but my friend Lynn thinks this is a strong novel, and we had a good discussion about the storytelling choices and why this book works so well for her.
The story is told in first person, from the perspective of the protagonist, Janey, who is looking back on the summer when she was twelve. Janey's parents are upper-middle class white folks who own a summer lake house, and they host raucous parties for their adult friends each night. Janey and her five-year-old brother, Jim, are mostly left to care for themselves through the summer. They spend their days wandering the marshland around the lake, playing in some kind of estuary or confluence, where they swim, fish, build sand castles or mud castles, sit in a sailboat they can't sail, and just pass the time with each other.
It was never made clear how old Janey is as the narrator looking back on this summer, a summer which turns out to be an extremely traumatic time in her life. Based upon the naive and uninformed statements Janey makes in this book, I would guess she is only twenty or maybe thirty as the narrator, or possibly still a teenager, age 18 or 19. She doesn't seem to have received any therapy to help her process what happened, and she makes no statements in the book to orient the reader to her current mindset in any satisfying or enlightening way. The purpose of this book is to narrate the long days of her summer that lead to the final pages of the book, when sudden devastation and trauma occurs. The book ends at the very moment a plot seems to arrive.
I had originally assumed Janey's 12th summer took place in the early 1990s, but after talking with my friend Lynn, I realized the author had set the story in the early 1970s. Ms. Gunn was born in 1960, so she would have turned twelve herself in 1972. Given that knowledge, it does make sense that this novel is set in 1972, though the text itself never provides any dates. The author also grew up in New Zealand, so I believe the novel is set in New Zealand, though the text itself never gives specific setting details. Nature, and the lake environment around the house, is given a lot of description in this short book, but I did not realize the novel was set in New Zealand until after I finished the book and researched the author.
According to my friend Lynn, a reader can look at all of the long, plotless exposition of the natural world in "Rain," which makes up the bulk of this book, and understand it to be a detailed metaphor for Janey's adult interior self: she is awash in a numbed state of emotion, living in a perpetual state of lassitude after what has happened to her. She has been unable to process or come to grips with her trauma, and she is narrating the earliest phase of her journey of healing, wherein she gives voice to the traumatic event, and nothing more. This explains why the book ends just as the plot appears, or just at the moment when the traumatic event occurs, because the adult Janey is finally leaving her state of numbness and/or denial to acknowledge that something terrible happened to her when she was twelve.
If you are someone who likes funeral scenes in movies that take place in the rain on gray, stormy days, scenes that use the environment to represent the emotion of grief so that the characters never have to name any of their feelings at all, then you will enjoy "Rain" a lot more than I did. After reflecting at length on this book, I have decided I do not enjoy books that rely solely on the natural setting to instruct the reader on a character's emotional state. It feels cheap to me. It feels like shoddy prose.
The film version of "Rain" drew attention to things that I completely misread or failed to pay close attention to in the narrative. In the movie, Janey is older than twelve, more sexually aware of herself, and she is competing with her mother for the attention of the adult men who show up at her parents' house parties. There was nothing like that in the novel. In the book, Janey has no narrated awareness of her sexuality, but there is one adult who does: an adult man comes into the bedroom Janey shares with her brother late one night, and while the reader fears the man is coming to rape Janey, Janey's mother quickly appears and leads the man away. The man doesn't appear on the page again until the final pages in the book, when he suddenly shows up at the lake, while Janey and her brother are playing outside.
The man leads Janey into some bushes, where it's clear they have sex, though the act isn't described on the page. Then the books shifts into second person, in which the "you" addressed to the reader is trying to save a small unnamed child who has drowned. The prose is focused and determined, going through the ordeal of performing CPR on a child, but is as emotionally detached as it is detailed. The reader is meant to understand that this is Janey's extremely traumatized way of telling the reader that her little brother drowned and she tried to save him by performing CPR, but she was unable to resuscitate him.
Near the end of the book, on page 80, Lynn drew my attention to some lines I had clearly misread. It is a scene in which 12-year-old Janey is interacting with her mother, and then describing her mother's perfume and makeup for the reader, but the narrative quickly changes direction:
"All her things were laid out there before the mirror. I touched them, the thick creams in jars, tissues blotted red with colour. I unstopped the bottle of her fragrance and the sharp, sweet smell came up at me again, adult.
'Come here, honey...'
Her things were warm to the touch. The creams, the lotions. I could spread them on my own skin.
'Don't be shy...'
It was just once at first, letting myself be taken, then more times, over and over until it was me myself going back for more. Leaving my family, leaving my little brother playing while the tides in the river were rising."
I had completely failed to understand that this text was telling the reader that Janey had begun having sex with the adult man who first crept into her bedroom at night, that they had engaged in sexual intercourse many times, and that was why Janey chose to have sex with him on the day her brother drowned.
Lynn said that this adult man must have been grooming Janey for sex, but the extent of his manipulations of Janey are limited to the passage I've quoted above. I don't think that text is being clear about this man's predatory behavior and rape of a child; instead, the narrative focuses on Janey's choice to have sex with him of her own volition.
While I understand that many rape victims do engage in this type of thinking -- psychologically, it is untenable to many people to have no control over their lives and be purely victimized by other people, and the human mind prefers to think we have control in situations where we really had none -- as a reader, I don't get any sense of Janey's victimization from this text. From an objective distance, i.e. as a thinking adult reading this book, I know that Janey is twelve and that this man was a pedophile and a rapist, but the first-person protagonist narrating this tale is the voice of a legally-adult woman who is telling the reader that she "chose to have sex" with this man on the day that her brother died. There is a disconnect going on in the narrative, and it feels like deliberate obfuscation.
I can understand grooming, pedophilia, and rape, but none of those terms are used in this book, and if Lynn hadn't pointed that specific passage out to me after I had finished the book, I would have assumed this adult man had just shown up to rape Janey, and while he was raping her, Janey's little brother drowned.
Knowing that Janey chose to have sex with this adult man more than once adds to my understanding that she would probably blame herself even more for her brother's death, but this novel is not about the aftermath of Jim's drowning at all. The book does not discuss matters of grief, blame, shame, or guilt. The author chose for the natural environment to express to the reader that Janey is traumatized, and shortly after the reader learns Janey was unable to revive her drowned brother, the book ends. Janey finishes narrating her story by returning to the same type of storytelling she began the book with, in which she and her brother are playing at the lake again, before he died:
"In rain we could take off our clothes and walk down the beach and into the lake in one continuous gliding movement. There was no telling where land ended, waves began. Sand and water dissolved into each other, blotted in mist. Nothing else existed on those days except two children. Watch them. Two with the whole beach to themselves, the whiteness of cloud and water swirling at their feet as they dance, round and around, round and around... With each turn becoming smaller, further away, smaller and smaller in the distance until you can't see them at all." (page 95)
If this type of storytelling and focus on nature-as-metaphor for a character's emotional landscape sounds like a good read to you, then you should check out this book.
Personally, I did not enjoy this novel at all, and I would have DNF'd after a few pages if I hadn't agreed to buddy-read this book with my friend. I'm glad that I finished the book only because I enjoyed talking about the novel with her, and I appreciated that she was able to tell me about the movie and how it differs from the book. Aside from that enjoyable conversation experience, I found this book utterly pointless.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 21, 2017
Four & a half stars.
This novella is a very powerful first published work, even though some of the writing on the first few pages is very Advanced Creative Writing Class & the tragedies are easily predicted. A sad tale of two neglected children product of a disfunctional marriage. I just can't stop thinking about it.
This novella is a very powerful first published work, even though some of the writing on the first few pages is very Advanced Creative Writing Class & the tragedies are easily predicted. A sad tale of two neglected children product of a disfunctional marriage. I just can't stop thinking about it.
January 22, 2017
Classificação: 3,5 estrelas
Uma certa dose de carga emocional numa história tão curtinha. Foi uma boa leitura.
Uma certa dose de carga emocional numa história tão curtinha. Foi uma boa leitura.
September 4, 2008
This is one of those surprising chance finds that I'd never have picked up if she and I weren't from the same clan. This is Gunn's debut novel. The prose is wet, poignant, and understated. Give yourself an hour or so on a rainy day and you'll finish it off.
This is a great example of the kind of captivating prose, and powerful story-telling I've always aspired to.
I'm especially impressed with her ability to recapture the feelings of powerlessness in childhood, the joy in play, and the sadness left in the wake after it's all over.
This is a fantastic author, and I'm glad to see her career has continued to move forward. Looks like I've got some catching up to do with her.
This is a great example of the kind of captivating prose, and powerful story-telling I've always aspired to.
I'm especially impressed with her ability to recapture the feelings of powerlessness in childhood, the joy in play, and the sadness left in the wake after it's all over.
This is a fantastic author, and I'm glad to see her career has continued to move forward. Looks like I've got some catching up to do with her.
February 17, 2008
Painful to read. The narrator's voice was unnatural, the plot -- if it can be called such -- was undeveloped or Gunn tried too hard for metaphysical depth and ended up with pages of scattered meanderings. And I never thought I'd say a book was too descriptive, but this book was; the narrator never stopped talking about the most meaningless details.
I had high hopes for this books and it met none of them. With that said, Gunn's sentences are well-crafted and there is a certain art to her style. Neither of these gifts, however, can save this book.
I had high hopes for this books and it met none of them. With that said, Gunn's sentences are well-crafted and there is a certain art to her style. Neither of these gifts, however, can save this book.
August 14, 2010
It is rare for me to choose a book at random and really enjoy it. Though the plot is not overly deep, the language in this book is beautiful and poetic. The relationship between siblings in this novice author's debut is touching, in a co-dependent sort of way and much in contrast to that between the children and adults. As quick as it is (the book is about 90 pages long), RAIN is memorable to say the least, I look forward to reading other books by Kirsty Gunn.
March 24, 2017
This is what happens when you write without even the most bare-bones plot - beautiful description and no story to speak of. Airy ruminations that never cohere into anything meaningful.
June 6, 2020
dark
depressing
best left unread
Child abuse in the worst ways.
Some might call this 'poetic' but to me it's way too wordy.
depressing
best left unread
Child abuse in the worst ways.
Some might call this 'poetic' but to me it's way too wordy.
August 5, 2024
so many mid books i wanna read bangers again (2.5!)
April 7, 2025
Sad story :( The way the story was told from Janey’s perspective both as a child and as an adult was done very well.
January 5, 2020
A dream, a nightmare of what it can be like to be an older sister. Set in New Zealand, so certainly of a time and place. If you like prose poetry, this is something to read.
May 31, 2015
Under a hundred pages, but full of emotion and at times beautiful writing. You get a strong feeling for each of the characters and though certain events are fairly obviously foreshadowed, the time when the truth comes out is still quite powerful. Near the end I was actually uncomfortable with what was happening, cringing at what was happening, it isn't very often that I feel anything for characters in a book, but Gunn's writing brings them out and makes it easy it identify with the them, and no more so than in the more difficult moments. A very good book, well worth the 3-5 hours it may take to read.
July 1, 2015
lots of writing, very little story.
I wanted so much to love this book, but I don't understand the reviews. this book was not great, in the least. the author can perhaps write, but apparently stories are not her thing.
o the droning on and on for pages about who knows what-- if you want to read pretty words, have at it; If you want to read a complete story with developed characters you care about engaging in any type of plot, skip this one. I'd recommend skipping it. Seriously.
I wanted so much to love this book, but I don't understand the reviews. this book was not great, in the least. the author can perhaps write, but apparently stories are not her thing.
o the droning on and on for pages about who knows what-- if you want to read pretty words, have at it; If you want to read a complete story with developed characters you care about engaging in any type of plot, skip this one. I'd recommend skipping it. Seriously.
April 29, 2020
This was dark and troublesome and even some beautiful, if sparse, writing couldn't save it for me. I do understand that this is meant to be a dark novel but I wanted more. There is no mention of the narrator ever coming to grips with what happened to both her and her brother and the guilt she feels and the anger she has to have towards her parents. It is a quick read but that is really the only positive part for me.
December 14, 2011
Not a poem, but not quite a novel, this book is more of a meditation on a theme. Driven by loss and beauty, it portrays a young girl's attachment to her still younger brother against the backdrop of the boundary-less world of narcissistic grown-ups. The territory is familiar, but it is reworked with confidence and elegance.
April 20, 2021
I noticed this book on my shelves the other day, a completely forgotten spur of the moment purchase from many years ago. Given its length, when I needed a short, one-sitting book before moving on to another 400+ page book, I picked it up.
My first impression of the book after finishing was disappointment -- The writing itself is a beautiful prose style -- almost lyrical. But there was far too much detail (rarely do I say this!) and far too little plot. In fact, the plot felt like it only began the last 10 pages or so. Recently I have noted on several reviews that if an author is skilled, there are instances where the things left unsaid are more powerful than what has been written. My first impression was that a lot of things were left unsaid and the author couldn't quite pull off this technique.
But I also felt like I was missing something with this little book and so this morning I started reading reviews. What did I miss? A lot apparently. If you view this book from a place of unresolved trauma for the now adult narrator, the structure of the story makes a lot more sense. Long descriptive passages of the littlest details of water, sand, weather, vegetation etc (nature) from the perspective of 12-year old version of the narrator populate much of the book that meander without any real plot -- although there are small tells here and there speaking of an impending traumatic climax. Finally the narrator reaches the telling of a culmination of tragic events - both of which were written, it seems, with a shifting perspective -- now the adult version of the narrator looking back -- clinical, without emotion. One event was relayed with almost no detail (a few lines of text), the other was extraordinarily detailed but also technical. Immediately after the latter, the book ends by reverting back to the original 12-year old perspective and seemingly inconsequential details. Protection.
Understanding this after the fact made me appreciate the book more than I did originally and I will very likely read this again in the near future armed with that knowledge ahead of time. That said, I give this book a 3-star rating because it just made me work too hard. But I will seek out more books by this author -- this was her first and I suspect it wouldn't take much for her to cross from 'meh, you made me work too hard' to 'wow, that was brilliant' in my mind.
My first impression of the book after finishing was disappointment -- The writing itself is a beautiful prose style -- almost lyrical. But there was far too much detail (rarely do I say this!) and far too little plot. In fact, the plot felt like it only began the last 10 pages or so. Recently I have noted on several reviews that if an author is skilled, there are instances where the things left unsaid are more powerful than what has been written. My first impression was that a lot of things were left unsaid and the author couldn't quite pull off this technique.
But I also felt like I was missing something with this little book and so this morning I started reading reviews. What did I miss? A lot apparently. If you view this book from a place of unresolved trauma for the now adult narrator, the structure of the story makes a lot more sense. Long descriptive passages of the littlest details of water, sand, weather, vegetation etc (nature) from the perspective of 12-year old version of the narrator populate much of the book that meander without any real plot -- although there are small tells here and there speaking of an impending traumatic climax. Finally the narrator reaches the telling of a culmination of tragic events - both of which were written, it seems, with a shifting perspective -- now the adult version of the narrator looking back -- clinical, without emotion. One event was relayed with almost no detail (a few lines of text), the other was extraordinarily detailed but also technical. Immediately after the latter, the book ends by reverting back to the original 12-year old perspective and seemingly inconsequential details. Protection.
Understanding this after the fact made me appreciate the book more than I did originally and I will very likely read this again in the near future armed with that knowledge ahead of time. That said, I give this book a 3-star rating because it just made me work too hard. But I will seek out more books by this author -- this was her first and I suspect it wouldn't take much for her to cross from 'meh, you made me work too hard' to 'wow, that was brilliant' in my mind.
May 30, 2024
goated. if this book has a million fans, i am one of them. if this book has no fans, i am dead.
rain is always gonna be special to me. it's the first book of nz lit i read that really affected me on a deep level. i was made to read it back when i was a little high school dweeb and have thought of it fondly ever since. one of few books that has made me genuinely weep, borderline sob. but its also relatively hard to find so i haven't come back to it since 2019. until now.
on re-read, i can confirm it's not just nostalgia glasses talking. if you squeezed this book into a bottle, you could only label it goat's milk.
front to back this thing is gorgeous, lyrical, miraculous fiction. from the cover onwards, you're enveloped in an immaculate atmosphere of murky, moody gloom. you know sometimes i'm quite cold on fiction that goes hard on setting description, especially of nature, because it can become kind of waffly or trite or repetitive to the point of it losing the intended effect of dazzling and becoming instead quite dull. absolutely not the case here. gunn evokes nature, and water especially, in terms that aren't there for fluff but rather to grapple with the way these things work on us, how they feel and how they linger in the mind. nature and water are deeeeeeply entwined with plot and character in this, and so its only right that gunn treats these things as rounded characters in their own right-active participants with complex and contradictory characteristics that can never be fully understood.
but ofc its not just 90 pages of nature metaphors. there's more here on family, loss, memory, trauma, youth, vanity, community, land rights. and all these themes are never berated over you, you get a sense of janey's feelings about these things through the anecdotes she relays.
the structure of rain is also very interesting to me. almost feels like we hover ever so slightly above the plot in reading it, and in each of the seven chapters we're dipping back down into it at various points. there are parts that feel closer to prose poetry or even lyric essay form.
look i cld go on but im sure you dont want more regurgitated bits of my m6 ncea lvl 3 essay. just read the book mate. it's that good.
rain is always gonna be special to me. it's the first book of nz lit i read that really affected me on a deep level. i was made to read it back when i was a little high school dweeb and have thought of it fondly ever since. one of few books that has made me genuinely weep, borderline sob. but its also relatively hard to find so i haven't come back to it since 2019. until now.
on re-read, i can confirm it's not just nostalgia glasses talking. if you squeezed this book into a bottle, you could only label it goat's milk.
front to back this thing is gorgeous, lyrical, miraculous fiction. from the cover onwards, you're enveloped in an immaculate atmosphere of murky, moody gloom. you know sometimes i'm quite cold on fiction that goes hard on setting description, especially of nature, because it can become kind of waffly or trite or repetitive to the point of it losing the intended effect of dazzling and becoming instead quite dull. absolutely not the case here. gunn evokes nature, and water especially, in terms that aren't there for fluff but rather to grapple with the way these things work on us, how they feel and how they linger in the mind. nature and water are deeeeeeply entwined with plot and character in this, and so its only right that gunn treats these things as rounded characters in their own right-active participants with complex and contradictory characteristics that can never be fully understood.
but ofc its not just 90 pages of nature metaphors. there's more here on family, loss, memory, trauma, youth, vanity, community, land rights. and all these themes are never berated over you, you get a sense of janey's feelings about these things through the anecdotes she relays.
the structure of rain is also very interesting to me. almost feels like we hover ever so slightly above the plot in reading it, and in each of the seven chapters we're dipping back down into it at various points. there are parts that feel closer to prose poetry or even lyric essay form.
look i cld go on but im sure you dont want more regurgitated bits of my m6 ncea lvl 3 essay. just read the book mate. it's that good.
March 5, 2025
Sie hat inzwischen mehrere geschrieben, aber ihr erstes ist bis heute das erfolgreichste Buch der 1960 geborenen neuseeländischen Erzählerin. 2001 wurde ein Film daraus, der auch in Deutschland im Kino lief. (Musik von dem Crowded-House-Mastermind und Hobbit-Balladenschreiber Neil Finn.) Im Film ist das ich-erzählende Mädchen Janey ein bisschen älter als die 12 Jahre vom Buch.
Es spielt in der ersten Hälfte der 1970-er Jahre. Indem sie fast Mutters Stelle einnimmt für den erst fünf Jahre zählenden Bruder, weist Janey, die selbst noch Kind ist, es aber nicht mehr lange bleiben wird, zwischen den Zeilen des Ausgesprochenen auf die Vernachlässigungen hin, die diese Kinder unter sich auseinander lebenden Eltern erfahren.
Das Elternpaar lädt sich immer wieder Freunde für Partys ein. Sie trinken viel Alkohol und stehen knapp vor ihrer Trennung. Die Mutter hat was laufen mit einem der Freunde. Hin und wieder scheint dieser Mann Janey gar in ein erotische Dreier-Spiel mit der Mutter hinein locken zu wollen. Im kurzen Buch macht sich unübersehbar Bedrohung breit.
Der letzte Sommer am Badesee in einer zerbrechenden Familie. Mehrfach ist von Badeunfällen die Rede, man wird sowohl im Buch wie im Film auf ein kommendes Unglück eingestimmt. Ich habe eine englische Ausgabe gelesen und zitiere daraus.
Es spielt in der ersten Hälfte der 1970-er Jahre. Indem sie fast Mutters Stelle einnimmt für den erst fünf Jahre zählenden Bruder, weist Janey, die selbst noch Kind ist, es aber nicht mehr lange bleiben wird, zwischen den Zeilen des Ausgesprochenen auf die Vernachlässigungen hin, die diese Kinder unter sich auseinander lebenden Eltern erfahren.
Das Elternpaar lädt sich immer wieder Freunde für Partys ein. Sie trinken viel Alkohol und stehen knapp vor ihrer Trennung. Die Mutter hat was laufen mit einem der Freunde. Hin und wieder scheint dieser Mann Janey gar in ein erotische Dreier-Spiel mit der Mutter hinein locken zu wollen. Im kurzen Buch macht sich unübersehbar Bedrohung breit.
Der letzte Sommer am Badesee in einer zerbrechenden Familie. Mehrfach ist von Badeunfällen die Rede, man wird sowohl im Buch wie im Film auf ein kommendes Unglück eingestimmt. Ich habe eine englische Ausgabe gelesen und zitiere daraus.
He scrabbles in next to me and lies curled in my side, breathing lightly at first then more slowly, evenly. It won't be long now until he's asleep. I start telling him a story off the sleeve of his pyjamas about a cowboy meeting a little indian boy and they decide to be friends. Back in the desert their parents are killing each other with muskets and bows and arrows, but the two boys find a plan to make peace. I've just got to the part where the indian goes to see the wise man in his tribe when I see my little brother's head heavy on the pillow. I kiss him once on his dry lips, then pick him up, a tiny bundle of sleep, and carry him back to his own bed. He won't wake again. I know his sleeping so well.
January 9, 2023
Truly confused on how this is a literary masterpiece, upon finishing it I hated it. But like many other books I read, I went to the internet to see if there was something I missed in the novel or if there is a moral I should have seen but again missed. Yet there was nothing there to dispel my views on it. Not only is the story somewhat choppy for me, but there were many situations in which you were forced to put the pieces together yourself with no help from the author. For example the ending, how are we supposed to know who drowns? Obviously I assumed it to be the little boy but nothing even regards it to be him. No names, no pronouns, and the way she is saving the person there is no emotion towards the person she is helping so how am I supposed to just ASUMME it’s the little boy. Even after exposing the attempt to save him she doesn’t seem affected by this death and continues to talk about the two of them as if neither is dead, once again leading people to believe he is alive.
Truly confusing and choppy story at best.
Truly confusing and choppy story at best.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 2, 2018
I love novellas, I really do. All of the story, none of the padding. Although I hesitated a bit as I typed that last line, because Rain could, I suppose, technically be shorter and tighter. Plot-wise, it could be condensed down to a short story... but the purpose of a novella, I think, is to explore emotion and mood and the small places of ambiguity in ways that an even more limited word can't always achieve. And Gunn succeeds in that very well here, both in what she writes and what she chooses not to write. Her wording is so compelling, and the repetition of all that water imagery provides thematic emphasis without becoming tiresome or laboured. Really it's just beautifully told. The sadness and shock inherent in the story - and it's certainly a confronting narrative in a number of ways - is sanded down into restraint and allusion, turning firmly away from melodrama. It's lovely, quiet, and polished.
March 30, 2018
This book was almost like reading a long freestyle poem. The book was short, but full of imagery and feeling. You understand the 12 year old girl’s feelings for her brother and the lake and the terrible life she leads emotionally. It is hard to understand the parents who are present, but not parenting. I gave it a four simply because of the terrible feeling it left in the pit of my stomach. I work in a school with kids from similar homes. Children aren’t able to handle what happens to the girl, and some do cope by convincing themselves it is something they want. My students have gone a step further to make it something they do to others as well. They come to us at that point for therapy. The book read too close to some of my students files and hurt to read.
October 25, 2019
Exquisitely written. Closer to poetry than a novel, Rain will continue to haunt me in the coming days. Gunn packs so much into her spare, elegant, lyrical prose. It's a nuanced work, evoking a past that only seems better than today. An endless summer, endless adult parties, cigarettes, cocktails lined up to be consumed into the wee small hours, and two children left largely to their own devices. What could possibly go wrong? Turns out, quite a lot. But beyond the banal details of the characters' lives, the achingly beautiful prose makes this a compelling read. Stunning!
March 6, 2021
This one blew me away from the first paragraph. I was immediately captivated by the language, the heady atmosphere that permeates the text, how alive and visceral everything felt. The first half of this book is so intricately laced with nostalgia of summer months as a child camping and running around wild. I was an excellent swimmer basically from birth and I could feel the lake water as the characters stood in it, practically taste the air. The second half was devastating but no less exquisitely rendered than the first half.
December 29, 2021
I was required to read this novel for one of my english papers at University, and I cant say that I enjoyed it. It feels like a student art film attempting to be highbrow but it can't be hidden that it was filmed in someone's basement. Sometimes it feels like authors forget that the conventions of novel writing are conventions for a reason. Coherency is one of those reasons. I can't say that it was all bad of course. Gunn has a knack for imagery and prose that hits you in the chest. If she writes any books in a style that isn't post-modern, I would be perfectly happy to give it a shot.
March 17, 2022
well, i wouldn’t say that i liked this book, it was a bit “dull and boring� in some places, especially at the end, it sort of felt like there were some missing details at times. but overall, i enjoyed it, i really fancied the writer’s style of word and would say i missed that kind of thing.
ps: wow, i finished this book on the same number of March as i started in January. what a treat! i feel like it’s a sign from the universe, as the only part which i had to read in order to finish it were just two pages� i love it. that’s why i don’t kill myself.
ps: wow, i finished this book on the same number of March as i started in January. what a treat! i feel like it’s a sign from the universe, as the only part which i had to read in order to finish it were just two pages� i love it. that’s why i don’t kill myself.
October 2, 2018
3.5. This is a very hard book to review. It is a novella so is short; it is a tragic tale. The writing though is beautiful and the story is powerful. I just didn’t enjoy reading it - which is probably the response the author was going for.
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