“They asked me to describe the pain but the pain defied description, on a scale from one to ten it demanded a different scale.” So begins “Small Rain,” the new novel by literary sensation Garth Greenwell . It begins with a nameless narrator having a medical emergency and ends up exploring no less than the nature of love itself and the very meaning of our shared humanity.
Reviewers are describing “Small Rain” — published this month by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux — as “profound,” “a triumph of genuine vulnerability,” and “an exquisite addition to the literature of illness.” SEE ALSO : Bestsellers, authors, books and more can be found in the Books section Greenwell’s first novel “What Belongs to You” in 2016 established the 46-year-old Iowa resident as a force in contemporary American literature: That book won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for other major laurels including the PEN/Faulkner Award. Plus, it was named a Best Book of the Year by more than 50 publications across nine countries.
His second work, “Cleanness,” also garnered critical praise — it was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and was cited as a top book of the year by numerous outlets including the New York Times, the New Yorker, TIME, NPR and the BBC. Love, carnal desires, emotional intimacy and distance — that’s the terrain Greenwell mines in both “What Belongs to You” and “.