- Paperback: 112 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber (7 Nov 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571173004
- ISBN-13: 978-0571173006
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 329,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
A twelve-year-old girl spends summers at a lake with her parents and little brother. The days are long and hot and while the parents entertain their friends the two children are left alone to play and dream and let the future come down upon them . . .
This is a story of loss. Of how families come undone. How children grow up. And how by losing the one most dear you find that in the end only a kind of oblivion can comfort you.
Exploring the way memory works, remembering both as a child and as an adult looking back on the child, Rain is an attempt to show the dissolving of the past. The reader is given the experience of remembering, along with the narrator, so that the story is not something told but is more like a dream, unravelling and disappearing while it is being read yet also yielding up each moment as intense, sweet, hypnotic.
About the Author
Kirsty Gunn published her first novel with Faber in 1994 and since then has written five works of fiction, including short stories and a collection of fragments and meditations. Translated in over twelve territories, and widely anthologised, her books have been broadcast, turned into film and dance theatre, and are the recipient of various prizes and awards, including the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. A regular contributor to various newspapers and magazines, she is also Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee, where she established and directs the writing programme. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.
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First Sentence
UP IN THAT PART the water smelled rivery. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
UP IN THAT PART the water smelled rivery. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The stretch of summer days seem as endless and as full of possibilities as the lake where Janey and her family spend their summer. Rain is narrated by Janey, a young girl verging on the brink of becoming a young woman. While her parents seem content to spend their nights partying and their days spent in deck chairs accompanied by a jug of ice and lemon and a bottle of Scotch, Janey and her younger brother, Jim, explore the lake. This book is a beautiful exploration of a young girl who doesn't want to exchange the freedoms of childhood for the awkward responsibilities of adulthood, but somehow she is pushed to do so. Beautifully written, sensuous and a delight to read; you can almost feel every word slipping through your mind's eye, like sand through the fingers. Even the landscape, or should that be waterscape, shimmers like a beautifully drawn character. I loved this book, it has the feel of a half remembered dream, sometimes even Janey can't remember if what she is narrating is past or present. It is as emotive and captivating as Alessandro Baricco's Silk, and like that haunting novella it is just the right size to take on a train journey or read on the beach. Rain has recently been made into a film which, although it differs slightly, maintains the haunting and beautiful essence of the book. I was given Rain as a gift and, like Silk, I will give this book to everyone I love.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
14 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
a child'd world in a the jewel of a drop of RAIN
1 Mar 2002
Format:Paperback
It's amazing the amount of emotion and insight Kirsty Gunn has managed to contain in this brief book. The story is told from the point of view of 12 year-old Janey, looking back as an adult on a pivotal summer spent at a house nestled by a lake in New Zealand with her little brother Jimmy and her parents. Janey loves her brother intensely -- at times she seems more like a parent to him than a sibling. He is the center of her life, and they spend hours and hours together each day, away from the house, away from their parents, usually in or near to the lake.
The parents in this story are not abusive -- at least, not overtly -- and it seems that they do love their children. Abuse isn't always about hitting and bruising -- it can be just as devastating when it is psychological. I was left with the impression that they were unsure how to act as parents. Each night of the summer, in the lake house, they host parties for their neighbors and friends. If the children don't manage to slip upstairs to their rooms unnoticed, they are called upon by the parents to perform for the guests -- or at the very least, to be put upon display. The impression is given that they did this to give substance to their union, to show that their were indeed fruits to their marriage, that it was real.
Through a marvelous style and pace of narration, the young Janey allows us to peer into her life -- we see and hear and feel things very believably and accurately from her perspective. The success of Gunn's attempt to do this attests to a formidable talent within her. The physical details are given life by the child's voice and observations -- and it rings very true, focusing on the things that a child would notice, the things that speak to her through the years and curtains of memory.
I can heartily recommend this book -- I enjoyed it much more than the author's THIS PLACE YOU RETURN TO IS HOME collection of short stories.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
An Intriguing Story Weaved with Vivid Imagery...
3 May 2002
Format:Paperback
Janey and her family spend their summers at their lakeside vacation home. The lake is a refuge for Janey and her little brother Jim, a place where they can get away from their parent's endless parties and the suffocating heat. Janey sees Jim as her child and her mother as an untouchable object of beauty that even her father cannot touch. When Janey realizes her mother's friend wants Janey, she gives into him leaving her young brother to spend his time playing alone as their parents stay in the vacation home.
This novel is a fast read filled with vivid descriptions of the lake, rain, water and just about everything else. The imagery is beautiful but at the same time too much description of the environment clogs the details of story. There are only so many times you can read about what the lake looks like, especially since you got it the first time around. The details of the story fall second to the environmental description but the story was an interesting one even though I was left wanting more details.
The poetry-like writing style distances the reader from the emotional aspects of the story. Even though I understood what Janey and her father felt, I never became involved to the extent that it affected me. The climax of the story was anti-climatic and mundane in it's instructional execution. I felt this novel, though beautifully poetic, could have been so much more.
However, I am looking forward to the movie which opens in theatres today. I am hoping that the visual execution will live up to this story's potential.
not what expected
16 July 2011
Format:Paperback
When I read the jacket of this book I was excited to begin reading it. however, I couldnt' get myself to finish it - was difficult to follow. the best thing about it was the cover.
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