The Small Rain

I must say, this is a very interesting book. It is actually Madeleine L’Engle’s very first novel, from the ‘40s, although it’s set in between the wars. It follows the life of a girl, Katherine, from about ten to twenty; her mother is a pianist, her father a composer and her aunt, who becomes her stepmother, is a famous actress. After a terrible car accident, her mother can no longer play; she dies a few years later from pneumonia after neglecting her health. Katherine who by this time has decided to also become a pianist, is sent to a Swiss boarding school by her father, and suffers there for a few years before returning to New York to study music seriously.

It’s very much a character study, based firmly in the world that L’Engle lived in at the time; she was acting and working in the theatre while knowing that she wanted to be a writer. It’s the sort of book that makes you ashamed of not working hard enough. Her usual fault, of making her children too knowing and too verbose, isn’t so apparent here because Katherine moves from childhood to adolescent and then adulthood fairly quickly. It’s a really interesting study of both Europe and the US during that period of time – a period with such a strange mix of freedom and propriety. She goes to a gay bar and is horrified; she has sex with a friend at seventeen and no one is shocked at all. There’s an enormous amount of drinking, which is something I’ve noticed in other books of that era, and movies too – they’ve always got a scotch in front of them. Because L’Engle is a strong Christian, there’s quite a few references to God and parts from the Bible, without any of the characters coming to any conclusions at all.

It’s funny that in the introduction she says it’s “very much a first novel”; actually I think it’s a lot better than some of her later books. Camilla, for example, is very similar to this book, though written for YA: this is a far better book. She keeps her dark edge through most of her books, and as an adolescent I found it too grim, but it works for this one. Again, she has a very, very distinctive voice, although I couldn’t exactly say what makes it hers; it’s clear, lyrical, thoughtful. Her characters are over-introspective, usually, and too easily able to put their thoughts into words; but I suppose you have to do that in a novel, and the digresses on Chekhov and Shakespeare are fascinating. Obviously a very interesting person, to have created such an interesting book.