The Yellow Rain

by Julio Llamazares

Book Overview

The last surviving inhabitant of the Pyrenean village of Ainielle lingers on at death's door as the first snows of the year arrive and the autumn leaves flutter about him. As he dies, his friends and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151005982
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

An elegy for a vanished way of life---a modern Spanish classic.

This powerful and richly atmospheric novel, a classic in Spain for the past fifteen years but only now translated into English, captures the love of an old man for his land and for the village in which he and his ancestors were born. It is also a study of the inexorable effects of time and the pressures it exerts on isolated communities and the human inhabitants who lack direct connection with a wider world. Told from the point of view of the elderly Andres, the last remaining inhabitant of a crumbling village in the Pyrenees, the novel details his physical and emotional deterioration as he observes the parallel collapse of the town, "whole buildings kneeling like cattle," the village itself a mangled and sad "unburied corpse." As the novel opens, Andres tells us that this is the last day of his life, describing what the men approaching from the nearest town will discover when they come to Ainielle for the first time in ten years. Gradually, Andres reveals the history of the village and of his own family, capturing his own desolation and possible madness. His confrontations with ghosts--of his mother, his three children, and wife Sabina--slowly reveal his life as a family man, along with his disappointments, his sometimes self-defeating behavior, and his never-ending desire to keep alive the village in which his ancestors worked the land. He knows that when he dies, any remaining vestiges of the village and its way of life will disappear from the earth. Andres's memories and his confrontations with ghosts add color, variety, and a sense of drama to what would otherwise be an interior monologue, showing the conflict between Andres and the forces of change. His preparations for his own death and description of the images the approaching visitors will see on their arrival constitute the quiet climax. The imagery is breath-taking. Realistic and grounded in the stark reality of farm life in a poor, nearly dead village, the nature imagery reveals parallels between the inner forces which have driven Andres to become the last human in Ainielle, and the passage of time and the seasons--deep snow, the rushing water of spring, and the falling poplar leaves, which he sees as "the yellow rain." A haunting memorial to those people who are incapable of accepting the changes of time, the novel forces the reader to consider those values and aspects of the past which are lost from our heritage when the memories and experiences of the elderly are not preserved, when old villages disappear, and when future generations do not care. Mary Whipple

A modern classic, an elegy for a vanished way of life.

This powerful and richly atmospheric novel, a classic in Spain for the past fifteen years but only now translated into English, captures the love of an old man for his land and for the village in which he and his ancestors were born. It is also a study of the inexorable effects of time and the pressures it exerts on isolated communities and the human inhabitants who lack direct connection with a wider world. Told from the point of view of the elderly Andres, the last remaining inhabitant of a crumbling village in the Pyrenees, the novel details his physical and emotional deterioration as he observes the parallel collapse of the town, "whole buildings kneeling like cattle," the village itself a mangled and sad "unburied corpse." As the novel opens, Andres tells us that this is the last day of his life, describing what the men approaching from the nearest town will discover when they come to Ainielle for the first time in ten years. Gradually, Andres reveals the history of the village and of his own family, capturing his own desolation and possible madness. His confrontations with ghosts--of his mother, his three children, and wife Sabina--slowly reveal his life as a family man, along with his disappointments, his sometimes self-defeating behavior, and his never-ending desire to keep alive the village in which his ancestors worked the land. He knows that when he dies, any remaining vestiges of the village and its way of life will disappear from the earth. Andres's memories and his confrontations with ghosts add color, variety, and a sense of drama to what would otherwise be an interior monologue, showing the conflict between Andres and the forces of change. His preparations for his own death and description of the images the approaching visitors will see on their arrival constitute the quiet climax. The imagery is breath-taking. Realistic and grounded in the stark reality of farm life in a poor, nearly dead village, the nature imagery reveals parallels between the inner forces which have driven Andres to become the last human in Ainielle, and the passage of time and the seasons--deep snow, the rushing water of spring, and the falling poplar leaves, which he sees as "the yellow rain." A haunting memorial to those people who are incapable of accepting the changes of time, the novel forces the reader to consider those values and aspects of the past which are lost from our heritage when the memories and experiences of the elderly are not preserved, when old villages disappear, and when future generations do not care. Mary Whipple

A Haunting Story

The Yellow Rain is a brief novel, the recollections of an elderly man slowly dying in an abandoned village in the Spanish countryside. He imagines his own demise and tells us about it, as he imagines that the village itself is haunted by the ghosts of those who have gone before him. He, like many others he tells us about, has slowly lost his mind, the solitude has gotten to him. Llamazares' novel is eerily entertaining, moody, evocative, with a touch of the gothic. It is an enjoyable brief read.

Time Is a Patient Yellow Rain

This book, a compelling and poignant elegy to both a vanished village and dying way of life, is one of the most beautifully written and sorrowful books I have ever read on the power of memory. Andres, the last surviving inhabitant of Ainielle, a small village in the Spanish Pyrenees, has been alone for years, with only his loyal dog, and the ghosts of his family and fellow villagers, for company. On what he believes to be his last day on earth, he recounts the slow, steady decay of his home and his village, the loss of his friends and family, and in the process tells us much about himself. The "yellow rain" of the Poplar leaves is compared to both time -- "like a patient yellow rain that . . .douses the fiercest of fires" -- and death. As he watches his village die, Andres laments the loss of his own life as well. His entire life has been one of loss -- of his young daughter to disease, of one son to the Civil War and another who leaves, never to be forgiven or come back, and of his wife, to suicide. What she cannot bear, Andres stubbornly suffers through. He loves his village as he loved his family, but is powerless to stop its destruction by nature and time. And ultimately he knows that he, too, must die, ultimately becoming a part of the past. Though the images of destruction and decay are strong and ominpresent, they nonetheless mingle with those of rebirth and growth; the life cycle is complete. The nature that destroys during the winter also comes alive again each spring.Andres comes to accept the fact that the ghosts of his past now dwell with him, and he himself then becomes a ghost, wandering through the streets of the old village and its surrounding hills, sometimes losing himself in time and place. He knows that his life is over and he finally comes to accept the loss of hope that his village will ever revive. This book is beautifully written -- the language poetic and rich, the symbols and images both stark and gently evocative. The past dwells with Andres, as it does for all of us, in the present, living on in memory and in dreams.My Spanish is not good enough to read Mr. Llamazares in his native tongue, so I can only hope that, in the future, there will be other translations of his works for me to read. This lovely little book is a perfect introduction to his writing.

A modern classic, an elegy for a vanished way of life.

This powerful and richly atmospheric novel, a classic in Spain for the past fifteen years but only now translated into English, captures the love of an old man for his land and for the village in which he and his ancestors were born. It is also a study of the inexorable effects of time and the pressures it exerts on isolated communities and the human inhabitants who lack direct connection with a wider world. Told from the point of view of the elderly Andres, the last remaining inhabitant of a crumbling village in the Pyrenees, the novel details his physical and emotional deterioration as he observes the parallel collapse of the town, "whole buildings kneeling like cattle," the village itself a mangled and sad "unburied corpse." As the novel opens, Andres tells us that this is the last day of his life, describing what the men approaching from the nearest town will discover when they come to Ainielle for the first time in ten years. Gradually, Andres reveals the history of the village and of his own family, capturing his own desolation and possible madness. His confrontations with ghosts--of his mother, his three children, and wife Sabina--slowly reveal his life as a family man, along with his disappointments, his sometimes self-defeating behavior, and his never-ending desire to keep alive the village in which his ancestors worked the land. He knows that when he dies, any remaining vestiges of the village and its way of life will disappear from the earth.Andres's memories and his confrontations with ghosts add color, variety, and a sense of drama to what would otherwise be an interior monologue, showing the conflict between Andres and the forces of change. His preparations for his own death and description of the images the approaching visitors will see on their arrival constitute the quiet climax. The imagery is breath-taking. Realistic and grounded in the stark reality of farm life in a poor, nearly dead village, the nature imagery reveals parallels between the inner forces which have driven Andres to become the last human in Ainielle, and the passage of time and the seasons--deep snow, the rushing water of spring, and the falling poplar leaves, which he sees as "the yellow rain." A haunting memorial to those people who are incapable of accepting the changes of time, the novel forces the reader to consider those values and aspects of the past which are lost from our heritage when the memories and experiences of the elderly are not preserved, when old villages disappear, and when future generations do not care. Mary Whipple