The Small Rain

I am a huge fan of Madeleine L'Engle's books for young readers, the books which truly set me on the path for science fiction for a tender age. One of the volunteers at my school learned this and gave me a copy of this, L'Engle's first book, written for adults. In L'Engle's forward to my edition, she cites that this is very much a first novel worked on for ages before she found success with “A Wrinkle in Time.” It's definitely not a book I would typically pick up from the description, but it does have its charm.

The story tells the coming of age of Katherine Forrester, an aspiring pianist. L'Engle paints beautiful pictures of grief and loneliness which I found strikingly accurate. The way that Katherine deals with the many rainfalls of her life all seem fundamentally grounded in truth. They are without doubt the best part of the book.

That said, the actual story is not exactly to my taste and the dialogue is sorely dated. The story takes place just before WWII, and I just have a hard time knowing what is conventional slang and what is just stilted and awkward. In that area, at least, the first novel-ness stands out.

If you are in need of a somewhat maudlin coming of age story, L'Engle's style still makes this worth a try, but for me, I need a few tesseracts to make the journey stand out.