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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.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/1/2026)
I finished This Is Happiness by Niall Williams in audiobook format yesterday and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Williams' gentle humor and keen depiction of this small, rural, Irish town was sooo wonderful. It was a little bittersweet at times, but still very satisfying. Listening to it fel...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (3/6/2025)
I just finished History of Rain by Niall Williams and loved it. Williams has an ear for Irish dialogue. The narrator is a young girl who tells her family's story, finding her father through the books he read. Water is everywhere, in the rain, the river, the sea, the puddles, and streaking down he...
-Sarah_S
"Starred Review. 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 the pitch-perfect voice of a saucily defiant young woman who has witnessed too much tragedy but who clings devotedly to those she's lost." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Destined to be a classic, Williams's seventh novel (after Boy and Man) isn't just the elegy Ruthie offers to the departed but also a love letter to reading and its life-giving powers. The author's voice and narrative remain utterly unique even as she invites comparisons to Jim Hawkins, Ishmael, and hosts of legendary literary narrators." - Library Journal
"[T]though the novel doesn't have a strong resolution, Williams makes so many good stylistic and storytelling choices that his latest is well worth the read." - Publishers Weekly
This information about History of the Rain was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Niall Williams was born in Dublin in 1958. His critically acclaimed and bestselling fiction has been shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the IMPAC Award. Williams' debut novel Four Letters of Love, an international bestseller, has been adapted by the author for screen and will star Helena Bonham-Carter, Pierce Brosnan and Gabriel Byrne. His most recent novel Time of the Child was an instant Irish Times bestseller and was awarded the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award. He lives in Kiltumper in County Clare, with his wife, Christine.
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