History of the Rain

Longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize

We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. That's how it seems to me, being alive for a little while, the teller and the told.

So says Ruthie Swain. The bedridden daughter of a dead poet, home from college after a collapse (Something Amiss, the doctors say), she is trying to find her father through stories--and through generations of family history in County Clare (the Swains have the written stories, from salmon-fishing journals to poems, and the maternal MacCarrolls have the oral) and through her own writing (with its Superabundance of Style). Ruthie turns also to the books her father left behind, his library transposed to her bedroom and stacked on the floor, which she pledges to work her way through while she's still living.

In her attic room, with the rain rushing down the windows, Ruthie writes Ireland, with its weather, its rivers, its lilts, and its lows. The stories she uncovers and recounts bring back to life multiple generations buried in this soil--and they might just bring her back into the world again, too.

“You can smell the peat burning and feel the ever-present mist in acclaimed Irish novelist Williams' luscious paean to all who lose themselves in books. Williams captures the awe and all of Ireland--its myths and mysteries, miseries and magic--through [Ruth's] pitch-perfect voice.”

"" --starred review, Booklist

"Destined to be a classic, Williams's seventh novel isn't just the elegy Ruthie offers to the departed but also a love letter to reading and its life-giving powers. [Her] voice invites comparisons to Jim Hawkins, Ishmael, and hosts of legendary literary narrators." --starred review, Library Journal

"A glorious celebration of [Ireland's] storytelling tradition . . . Sweep[s] the reader joyfully along." --The Daily Telegraph

"History of the Rain is charming, wise and beautiful. It is a love letter to Ireland in all its contradictions, to literature and poetry and family. It acknowledges that faith itself is a paradox, both possible and necessary. And faith carries this novel--faith that stories can save us, that love endures, that acceptance is within reach, and finally, that it is possible to get to the other side of grief." --Shelf Awareness

"A celebration of books, love and the healing power of the imagination." --Irish Independent

Niall Williams was born in Dublin and studied at University College Dublin. His work includes stage plays, screenplays, nonfiction (co-written with his wife, Christine Breen), and, to date, seven novels. His first novel, Four Letters of Love, was an international bestseller, published in more than twenty countries, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Williams has been twice nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize. He lives in the west of Ireland.

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