A New Statesman Book of the Year 'My book of the year . . . Rarely has illness made for such a
compelling read' - John Boyne author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 'Marvelous:
exceptionally vivid real and true' - Colm Tóibín author of Long Island 'Fundamentally about
the beauty of life' - Alice Winn author of In Memoriam 'Exquisite. Utterly mesmerizing' -
Mark Haddon author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 'A fierce beautiful
novel' - Sarah Moss author of Summerwater 'Beautiful evocative' - The Times A medical
crisis brings one man close to death - and to love art and beauty - in a profound and
luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell. A poet's life is turned inside out by
a sudden wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees and eventually to the ICU. Confined
to bed plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system he struggles to understand
what is happening to his body as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a
searching sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience where the forces that
give life value - art memory poetry music care - are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands
and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a
radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability the limits and possibilities of
sympathy the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all this is a love story of
the most unexpected kind. '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!
