Small Rain

Small Rain is a marvelous novel: exceptionally vivid, real, and true. Garth Greenwell’s sensibility is rich and generous – the narrator's memories are haunting, and his experiences of both illness and love are deeply affecting. You are in the room with him. This is a true achievement, written with engaged humanity and a great command of style. - Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island

A fierce, beautiful novel about loving, living, dying, caring and being cared for. Greenwell’s sentences crackle with contained energy. - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater

I’ve never read anything that so vividly captures the helplessness of a hospital stay. Greenwell weaves moments of clear-eyed misanthropy into a novel that is fundamentally about the beauty of life. Small Rain is claustrophobic, terrifying, soaringly philosophic. It will make you notice that you are alive, which is maybe the most important thing a book can do. - Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam

Greenwell writes with exquisite precision about pain and loss – but his novel is equally a meditation on joy, beauty, and above all, love. Small Rain is a triumph, one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time. - Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies

Exquisite . . . Utterly mesmerising' - Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Greenwell writes tenderly about what it is to be subject to the crises of the body. Small Rain is a document of searching, an interrogation of love, care, and time, daring in its refusal to be abstract about the concrete facts of life and death. - Raven Leilani, author of Luster

Small Rain is a marvel, one of America’s greatest writers working at the top of his game, moving into new territory with force and grace and wisdom and overwhelming beauty. - Phil Klay, author of Redeployment

An exquisitely human novel which confronts death and meets it with poetry, art and love . . . An utter triumph of expression. - The Bookseller

I just didn't put it down . . . very romantic, incredibly moving - Miranda July

Tantalizing . . . Greenwell – such a finely tuned, generous writer – transforms a savage illness into a meditation on a vital life. - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Virtuosic . . . cathartic and unforgettable. It’s a luminous departure from Greenwell’s spare and erotic earlier work - Publishers Weekly, starred review

There's an unshowy genius to Garth Greenwell's prose that feels genuinely peerless among contemporary American novelists . . . Small Rain is a classic, a dawn serenade, a little miracle of exigent joy. I'll be rereading it the rest of my life. - Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

A novel of blazing universality and grace. - New York Magazine