Small Rain

Advance Praise

"A priest of perception, Greenwell implicitly makes a moral claim about dwelling with details--a claim that reaches its apotheosis in Small Rain . . . This kind of looking not only consecrates the ordinary world, but makes a bridge between disparate ideas, bringing them to a level plane of existence . . . Literature is powerfully linked to life. The heart of the book beats in such resonances. Lush with literary references, the novel invites still more."
--Rhoda Feng, Boston Globe

"In Garth Greenwell's acutely observed and sensitively embodied newest, a poet lies in a hospital room, afflicted by the sudden onset of an excruciating pain. Amid IVs and paper cups of pills, a series of intimate relationships unfurl."
--Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair

"Throughout Small Rain, Greenwell's massing, vascular prose, arranged in paragraphs that span many pages, deftly forces the reader to slow down and concentrate. His sentences are parataxic and branching, as organic and surprising as a network of veins . . . Greenwell's great gift: finding forms for the representation of thought, much as the Impressionist painters, more than a century ago, found new forms for the representation of light . . . The novel [has] blazing universality and grace."
--Sarah Thankam Mathews, New York

"[A] great American novel . . . The best of Greenwell's writing brings to mind an overflowing container, a surfeit of emotion and insight."
--Hannah Gold, The Nation

"[A] novel about what it really means to be alive."
--Shannon Carlin, TIME

"This propulsive novel is set in the ICU, where our narrator spends 11 days for an injury to his aorta that mystifies his doctors and terrifies his partner (they were set up by colleagues as the only two gay poets in Iowa City). As he tries to understand what is happening, he bonds with one caretaker over medieval music and recoils from another's frighteningly incompetent care as we're immersed in his dazzling mind."
--Menschen (Book of the Week)

"Art, Greenwell shows us, expands and humanizes us. How the mundane (a sparrow, a cup of coffee, an avocado-oil chip!) can be charged with meaning, 'absolute bliss.' Against a backdrop of anger and confusion--over masks and vaccines, police brutality and protests, the 'terrible slow catastrophe' of climate crisis--Small Rain asserts the astonishing beauty of life."
--Jessica Olin, Oprah Daily

"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!

"The virtuosic first-person narration, devoid of dialogue, places the reader front and center in the narrator's bracing account . . . serving as a palpable reminder to never take one's health for granted, and it builds to a cathartic and unforgettable conclusion. It's a luminous departure from Greenwell's spare and erotic earlier work."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Garth Greenwell is one of our best contemporary prose stylists (due in part, no doubt, to his previous life as a poet), and a new book from him is always a cause for celebration. This novel, in fact, concerns a poet, who suddenly, and with no explanation, finds himself in incredible pain. No doctors can find the source, which makes the book hum with urgency, but of course the real questions Greenwell tackles here are much more metaphysical, though no less urgent--all of the questions of life, love, time, mortality, consciousness made crystalline."
--Emily Temple, Lit Hub (Most Anticipated Books of 2024)

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

"I just didn't put it down . . . Very romantic, incredibly moving."
--Miranda July, author of All Fours

"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

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

"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 Missionaries

"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

"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

"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 The Magician