Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Small Rain

By: Garth Greenwell
Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.24

Buy for $20.24

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Long-listed, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, 2024

"Garth Greenwell's superb narration makes a powerful case for authors reading their own work...there's an open tenderness in Greenwell's voice that's immediately compelling"—AudioFile on Cleanness

This program is read by the author.

A medical crisis brings one man close to death—and to love, art, and beauty—in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell.

A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.

This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Garth Greenwell (P)2024 Macmillan Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“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

What listeners say about Small Rain

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    9
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    12
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

I’m glad I read the prequel

I loved this book and lived it. From experience, I knew how and why this unnamed character felt the way he did being trapped in a hospital for days with an ailment during the Covid pandemic. The language is poetic, aching. I was left on the edge of my seat wondering if the hospital was going to discharge him. A fine book and conclusion of this series. I highly recommend it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A Masterpiece

As a senior gay man who has been both patient and care giver, this book hit very close to the bone. The descriptions of the internal meanderings of the mind as one lay in pain, helpless but coherent, is both very true and amusing by its very veracity. My only complaint is that it ended.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Perfection

Unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Delicate attention to every detail and interaction. Beautiful prose from the POV of a poet whose life is threatened by a failing body. Read so earnestly. I will never forget this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A beautiful portrait of sudden illness

A unique perspective from a poet who has a sudden medical emergency and that results in an ICU stay during COVID times. The narrative drifts from detailed descriptions of each medical decision and larger philosophical and biographical stories. It made me consider the preciousness of my own health and how the standard of care we receive in medical settings can make such a difference in quality of life.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Don’t

Not what one comes to expect from Gareth ..
I get the jest - but the experiment failed to take off ..
I rarely ever post reviews specially not neg ones - but I felt hmmmm it’s a queer trap - not fair ..


Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!