Rainlight

By Alison McGhee

Book Overview

The moving story of a father who dies young and the family he leaves behind Even in a small town people have secrets, including how much they really mean to each other. In Alison McGhee's haunting... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312277032
• ISBN13: 9780312277031
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Picador
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.9" x 0.6" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

poignant and delicate ... a sure winner

A tragic accident brings out musings from 4 different characters and reveals secrets between each other that some goes a long way. This book is beautifully written. It's poignant, delicate, touching ... reading it feels like having a soft velvety whisper of air on your skin. Each character grows on you that you feel like you know them very well. Each secret is revealed flawlessly. And after reading her 2nd novel -- Shadow Baby -- I think Ms. McGhee is very good in writing about child characters.

One of my new favorite books

I read an average of 10 to 20 books a month. While most of these books are good and a few of them may be very fine novels, very few of them make me excited about an author and about the novel. Rainlight is such a book. The writing is incredible, not just for a first novel, but for any novel. While the multi-narrator format has been in use since at least William Faulkner, Alison McGhee makes it feel fresh and insightful. The story is fast paced and while the novel is emotionally charged by the many viewpoints of the characters, this is such a well told story. This book really is that good. This is a somewhat difficult review to write because it is hard not to gush about this book...and i don't gush very often. This is worth your time and money.

MORE SUPERB, TOUCHING WRITING FROM ALISON McGHEE

The first novel I read by Alison McGhee, SHADOW BABY, touched me more than most of the books I have read in the last few years. After reading RAINLIGHT, I'm certain that I've discovered a writer who ranks as one of my favorites.This novel is set in the same small town as SHADOW BABY, in the Adirondacks, in upstate New York, and features some of the characters who appeared briefly in the other novel. One of the most appealing things -- at least to me -- about McGhee's writing is her ability to create such believable, LIKABLE characters. This is not to say that all of them are perfect, that they make no mistakes in their lives -- they are human, after all. The author builds her characters so completely -- and yet so gently -- that we come to know them at depths which allow us to understand WHY they act as they do, to see the good that exists in all of them, making it easier to overlook or forgive their foibles.RAINLIGHT is a unique look at the way human beings deal with death and loss -- and that should not imply that this is a depressing, maudlin book, for there is much happiness and joy and love contained in these pages. It is rather a caring look at our humanity, at the things that are really important, about how we remember those who have touched our lives and are no longer with us in the flesh -- a story about remembering.Even though the two novels are connected in setting and some characters, I don't think it's necessary to read one before the other -- but if you enjoy well-written, touching fiction, please read them. If you pass these by, you're missing an incredible experience.

You will want "Rainlight" to go on...

I read Alison McGhee's "Shadow Baby" just last month and fell in love with her characters, and went right back to the library and put a search in for "Rainlight". I am so glad I did! This is such a tender and thoughtful book - one of the best I have ever read. McGhee leaves no stones unturned in her books. Every word will come to mean something later-even though her books are not long they are PACKED with meaning and emotion so only read when you are ready to pay attention! But one of the most delightful parts of her books was that some of the characters from "Rainlight" carried over into "Shadow Baby" and I was so glad to "see" them again! I hope her next book takes us back to Sterns, NY again-I can't wait to make the trip!

Excellent reading!

I enjoyed reading Rainlight! I love the way you captured the mourning process that each of the characters went through. I was especially moved by Mallie and the way she dealt with her fathers' death. I found it so interesting the way each of the characters had been keeping a secret about the others, a secret that could have freed that character from some emotional pain they had been harboring for a long time. I was relieved when they finally opened up to one another. I looked forward to reading the book every night at bedtime - it was both easy reading and very moving. I cried quite often.