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Small Rain by Garth Greenwell review – mortal reflections from a hospital bed

Our unnamed protagonist is in hospital with a condition doctors cannot explain. As he fears for his life, his problems come to seem trivial

Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain garnered worldwide praise on its release last year. Its paperback release should do wonders for its readership: a short but tightly packed book, Greenwell’s novelistic voice is best read on an underground train back from work or on long summer breaks. Don’t be surprised to see Small Rain becoming a sensation. 

That’s not to say that the reading is all plain sailing. Our unnamed protagonist has been admitted to hospital in his native Iowa with a condition his doctors cannot explain. Something life-threatening and mysterious forces a period of intense reflection from the hospital bed. Given that our bed-ridden host is a writer and teacher, there is much to please the aesthete here.

There are plenty of reflections on half remembered bits of poetry. There are also some slightly less interesting reflections on the politics of the coronavirus pandemic. The style is unique: the sentences are long and broken up, the chapters much longer. We are stuck most of the time on the hospital bed, and the dialogue is all indirect. 

So far, then, Greenwell’s book may sound like interesting stuff, but nothing too pathbreaking. Some readers might have enough of what our protagonist calls the “cultural baggage” of this novel – the sentimentalised, middle-class American pleasantries which he acknowledges. Strangely, though, the best parts of this book are found in the most unexpected places.

His partner, L, is also a teacher, a professor. They have a house bought a few years ago, which has caused no end of financial and safety problems. Think how much time has been spent, how much money! Think how all those lofty ideas we had were taken away by the stress of paying the bills to make sure our house didn’t fall down, to pay off the dodgy contractors called in to fix it. 

As he’s made to fear for his life, these defining problems come to seem trivial. This novel probes the question of how far perspective and reflection can take us. What seemed to define our life
suddenly seeps into irrelevance. 

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

Greenwell’s greatest asset in this novel is that ability to see life laid bare. Illness can help give definition to our life in health. Only when contrasted with something near to death can we make better sense of what is worth our time in the midst of life.

My only gripe would be that portions of this book are unnecessary, and somewhat turgidly written. Reflecting on how horrible people are on Twitter is terribly contemporary, but not particularly original. Nonetheless, there’s plenty enough original stuff here to make this engrossing novel a newfound classic. 

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell is out now (Pan Macmillan, £9.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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