Jack Edwards's Reviews > Small Rain

Whenever I realise a book is set during the pandemic my fight or flight response is triggered, but this book uses that context to discuss illness, mortality, poetry, art, and love in an incredibly intimate and soul-bearing way. Laid out on a hospital bed and fighting for his life, this character's precarious predicament facilitates total vulnerability.

The detailed descriptions of procedures and daily life in the ICU can be a little monotonous and menial after a while and it nearly lost me in the first 20 pages where it was all hospital-description, but once the character begins to meditate on life and its meaning this book really takes flight. If anything the juxtaposition of the harsh hospital lights, the needles, and the body's pain help to make the emotional rumination seem all the more soft and tender.