Small Rain by Garth Greenwell is one of the most creative books I’ve read this year. Not creative in that it plays with style or structure, but simply for its somehow wholly engaging focus on the micro detail (and in doing so, tells a macro story).

What a strange thing a body is, I thought, how eerie to be filled with blood and covered with hair, to be a machine any part of which might fail; and how strange to have hated it so much, when it had always been so serviceable, when it had done more or less everything I had needed until now, when for more than forty years it had worked so well. Poor body, I thought again, looking down on it. I had hated it so much and been so ashamed and I might have loved it instead.

The novel is essentially about a man’s extended stay in hospital (in the throes of the pandemic), for treatment of what becomes an increasingly serious cardiac condition. Greenwell describes every procedure, the rhythm of the hospital wards, the tone of the doctors and nurses, the feel of the sheets, the tilt of the bed, the stickiness of the adhesives used to attach electrodes, the awkwardness and intimacy of a sponge bath… you get the idea! And in this abundance of detail, the reader becomes completely invested in what is happening to the protagonist, and most importantly, whether he will survive.

For a few moments no one came in or out, I was alone. The titration machine chittered beside me, little clicks that came without any pattern I could discern, sometimes fast, sometimes with long pauses between, at times as the days passed it would be maddening but not yet.

At the broadest level, Small Rain reveals much about the dysfunctional and inequitable US healthcare system, and in parallel, alludes to the political and socio-economic climate of the country –

…it had become impossible to ignore, American unreason, it had come to seem less aberrant, less a thing of the margins than at the heart of what we were, it had corroded the idealism that had always also been a part of my sense of my country, I mean my sense of self; corroded it not just for me but for nearly everyone I knew…

As the procedures and tests continue, the protagonist reflects on other events in his life – his work (he is a poet), meeting his partner, buying a house together and establishing a life in a town far from where he grew up. These vignettes also reveal something about shared human experience, mortality, vulnerability, art, privilege, finding meaning and family relationships.

…among all these strangers how much I needed to be with someone I knew, how much I needed to feel loved is what I mean, I guess, to feel my life tethered to someone by whom I was loved. That feeling, the feeling of being loved, the surprise of it, had faded over the years, with domesticity and its constant minor frictions, its impediments to freedom; but it was still there, and it flooded me now.

Greenwell’s words flow, like poetry, but as you’re reading, you’re aware that the hospital machines are beeping in the background – and that is the creative skill in this book, mind drifting, only to be fully returned to the hospital setting.

She would want to check it, she said, the nurse I mean, she would want to make sure there wasn’t blood in it, and that filled me with shame, too, the idea of her examining my shit. I was full of squeamishness, which whatever else it is is a way of clinging to life, I could still care about unessential things.

This is a multi-faceted and thoughtful book, and one that had me thinking about our lack of autonomy when we are forced to rely on others for our care.

4/5

…and croquetas, I said, almost moaning at the memory of them, with spinach and mushrooms, just the best.