Reviews - History of the Rain

282 reviews for:

Funny story (maybe?)

I ordered this book online from my wonderful library. It wasn’t until it had sat on my nightstand for a couple of weeks, waiting in line behind other books Needing To Be Read that i realized it was style “wrong” book. I had meant to request The History of Rain, by Stephens Gerard Malone.

But, my pile had dwindled and I figured I’d give this a go. So glad I did. Wonderful, poetic, heartfelt book. There were some slow patches, but it left me with a desire to read it again, which is always a good sign.

skwinslow's review against another edition

5.0

I’m trying to convince my friend Kyanne that I love Irish literature not ONLY because I have an attraction to books in which everyone dies after suffering unspeakable tragedy, so I want her to read this one. (Ahem!) While I admit I cried throughout much of the last fifty or so pages, this book is just pure delight, start to finish. Ruth Swain is one of my new favorite narrators. I love her, I love her voice, I love her family and all their stories, I love the characters, I love the rain, I love the humor, I love the heartbreak. I read this book with a pen in my hand so I could underline my favorite passages, and at times it seemed like I was underlining something on every page. Wonderful. I finished this book and literally just wanted to hug it.

rnicaogain's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

merle98's review

3.25

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was beautifully written and full of lovely descriptions of rainy West Ireland, but it was also a good 80-100 pages too long (Part 2 was long and uneventful); the family really is suspiciously disaster-struck; and I don't think I believe Ruth's character as a 19-year-old girl. Somehow all the gender essentialism and the I'm-weird-and-not-like-other-girls-ness of Ruth work even less when the author is a man in his 50s.

seriouslysarah's review against another edition

3.0

Really 3.5/4 I couldn’t decide so...
Tragically beautiful, heart wrenching, happy, nice.. it all.

carmon_conover's review

5.0

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Told from the perspective of a bookish girl in her late teens (and done well, amazingly, considering the author is a middle-aged man), Ruth Swain, this is the slow unfolding of her telling the story of her complicated father's life. The place, a small Irish village called Faha, is filled with people who don't get this girl or her family because they don't fit in and nothing ever seems to go right for them. Yet their strangeness, while keeping them from belonging, also gives them status.

The perpetual rain is a character in the story, as are books, with quotes and allusions from famous literature peppered liberally throughout the story. The Impossible Standard is a theme, and the tragedy of trying to live up to it, especially as a writer, is a thread woven throughout, with the possibility of that curse being broken by a broken but not defeated girl who was loved deeply, a gift far greater than the material means she lacked.

I highlighted many beautiful passages in this literary novel. At points I smiled at the juxtaposition of classic literary quotes with modern allusions (bouncing from Edith Wharton to Star Wars, for example). Here are a couple of highlights about writing and poetry:

"He had no intention of writing. He loved reading, that was all. And he read books that he thought so far beyond anything that he himself could dream of achieving that any thought of writing instantly evaporated into the certainty of failure." (Page 260, Kindle)

When the villagers discovered Ruth's father, Virgil had begun writing poetry, they had some judgmental reactions at first, then their tune changed: "But after that initial wave had passed a third reaction came and endured, a quiet awe and respect reserved for someone who had chosen such a serene and perfectly impractical career as that of Poet. We’re like that as a people. We can’t help but admire a bit of madness." (Page 279, Kindle)