Small Rain Audiobook By Garth Greenwell cover art

Small Rain

A Novel

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Small Rain

By: Garth Greenwell
Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
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$8.99/mo. after 3 months. Cancel anytime. Offer ends July 15, 2026 at 11:59pm PT.

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"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.

Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction World Literature
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Critic reviews

Advance Praise

“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

“An exquisitely human novel which confronts death and meets it with poetry, art and love . . . An utter triumph of expression.”
The Bookseller

Small Rain is a marvel, one of America’s greatest writers working at the top of his game, moving into new territory with force and grace and wisdom and overwhelming beauty.”
—Phil Klay, author of Missionaries

“Greenwell writes tenderly about what it is to be subject to the crises of the body. Small Rain is a document of searching, an interrogation of love, care, and time, daring in its refusal to be abstract about the concrete facts of life and death.”
—Raven Leilani, author of Luster

“Greenwell writes with exquisite precision about pain and loss—but his novel is equally a meditation on joy, beauty, and above all, love. Small Rain is a triumph, one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time.”
—Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies

Small Rain is a marvelous novel: exceptionally vivid, real, and true. Garth Greenwell’s sensibility is rich and generous—the narrator's memories are haunting, and his experiences of both illness and love are deeply affecting. You are in the room with him. This is a true achievement, written with engaged humanity and a great command of style.”
—Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician

Intimate Details • Interesting Medical Aspect • Elegant Prose • Philosophical Storytelling • Emotional Impact

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Although my first impression was Winnie the Pooh (the voice) is gay and has a medical emergency, I was drawn in and felt a bit of privilege about being trusted with the intimate details of the illness and the author’s life. The medical aspect was interesting, but the impact on a life as a whole made me lean into this story and want an explanation of the illness and what the narrator could expect in the future. But with real life, nothing is ever that neat.

Worth Getting Through

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Beautiful passages and imagery throughout. Great reflections on poetry, and medicine, and life and attention.

Excellent

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I loved the deep emotions, the doubts, the exploring, the wonder, and questions. The author was definitely the only person who could have conveyed these feelings. The perfect reader. I totally loved the book. It was a book club choice. I listened to it twice!

Small Rain

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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.

A Masterpiece

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I loved this book so much. It made me want to read more poetry… which is shocking for a book about an intense medical situation during the height of the pandemic. I personally swore off reading anything pandemic related—it feels too soon to be reminded of it in literature but this book depicts that time with such precision and justice. I would highly recommend this book. Beautiful. Truly beautiful.

Difficult premise, beautiful book

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