The Year It Rained

by Crescent Dragonwagon

Book Overview

Having survived three suicide attempts and treatment in a series of mental hospitals, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth continues to fight for happiness in a life filled with confusion and turbulence. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1853810746
• ISBN13: 9781853810749
• Release Date: April 1989
• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

without rain, there would be no rainbows

this novel may never win a literary award, but it helped save my life. i was 14 when i came across this personal & engaging story and i had already been in a psychiatric hosptial once myself. finally, i found a character i could truly relate with. someone who was neither perfect nor completely screwed up. she seemed to be a "normal" teenager with some problems coping just like i was. many of the actual details are fuzzy to me now, yet i remember really resonating with the the main character & the entire book being very welcoming & embracing. i felt a part of her journey as she struggled with complicated issues surrounding growing up: divorced parents, attempted suicide, & maturing into her own woman. it was honest without glamorizing her darker side, as much of my current reading at the time tended to do (as is the case with a lot of this genre, which makes sense as that seems to be what attracts the audience). it offered no cookie-cutter solutions or promises of rose gardens, leaving you instead with a fresh sense possibility & joy (both of which are difficult for someone struggling with depression, etc) as the narrator begins to truly embrace her life. i fully recomend it to anyone who has a tween to college age friend in their life (depending on their personality, etc) especially if they're particularly sensitive females with or without an artistic temperment as an encouraging example of the rainbows that can come after stormy adolescence. at a time when seperation from the adults in their life can become a pressing struggle, i believe someone sharing this with them could present a sign of empathy & support that can be appreciated when more direct means can sometimes feel too invasive. and even if your relationship is very open, it can provide a wonderful connection ~ especially if you read it too! ~it gave me hope~ though it has been over 15yrs since this book came into my life, i still credit it with being a shaping influence on the woman i am now so much that i feel compelled to respond to the editorial review from the school library journal that's copywrited a year after my initial review. personally, i believe it was 'whining', 'lacking in insight' & a 'self serving' 'washout'. why does trev jones focus almost entirely on the strained relationship between the mother & daughter which is a significant but not singular theme to the book? and making a point to note that the mother is a children's book author without even mentioning that elizabeth is a poet (which is a huge key to the conclusion of the book & inspires her to free herself from her dysfunctional past)? i actually agree that the animosity towards her mother was never fully clarified (in fact it seemed the author was a bit unsure of the tone desired between the two of them & i found it a bit annoying as well when reading it) however, ambiguos discontent is somewhat a halmark of adolescence, is it not? the reviewer seems close to be too personally upset to

Superbly real and enigmatic.

Eventhough I read this book for the first time when I was sixteen years old, I still feel as if I could read it over and over again, and would never tire of it. Its subjects are real and dealt with in a way that everyday people may relate to. It was the starting point for my own literary adveture that gave me an apetite for heart-warming and heart-breaking books.