Rate this book

The Value Of Rain (2011)

by Brandon Shire(Favorite Author)

4.25 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

TPG Books

review 1: The author, whom I met after a nice review of my blog suggested I read this one of his oeuvres first. It was not an easy read.When you first get into the story, it hauls itself at you with all the disgusting details of death, vile stenches and human relationships unraveling. My first instinct was to put it down.Then comes a glance at happiness, at what might have been, could have been, should have been, before you're forcefully drawn back into the bottomless pit of human emotional manure that psychiatric institutions at their worse rake with.By the time our protagonist gets out he's broken and the story takes its course to the inevitable end, although, although I cannot allow myself to deny the flicker of hope in the last few sentences. I declare them hopeful, simply becau... morese I cannot do otherwise.I have met broken people, I've been hurt by just how broken they are, how they turn hope into hopelessness, good into evil, positive into negative. I've had them drag me down with them, far too far for my own good.I've met Charles, and over the years I've learned to steer clear of people like Charles. Sadly, they do exist, sadly, like Caufield, I had to give up, every time, to survive.This is a difficult read, but allow yourself the time to be drawn into the story. See the beauty, the hope and the love scattered like leaves throughout the story. Brandon is an incredibly talented writer. I lift my proverbial hat to him, wishing I had but an ounce of his talent, and proceed to read his next book…Merci!
review 2: The Value of Rain is a book like a glass of ice water to the face, to the heart. It’s a dark novel, an endless rainy night in a season of monsoons; when the sun comes out—and it does come out—it remains half-hidden in its own shadow much like the protagonist, Charles, himself.The writing is as spare, unforgiving and mean as the story it tells. A torrent of horror and atrocity pours down with the vigor of acid rain. The extreme cruelty and apathy of the adults veers perilously close to caricature yet this very exaggeration serves to cast a spotlight on the harsh reality that is the central premise of this unforgettable book: we are failing our LGBT children; we are failing to give them a sense of self-worth, we are failing to love them. At fourteen, after being caught in the arms of his first love, in aftermath of his first gay experience, Charles is committed, remanded to the first of two consecutive psychiatric institutions—institutions that are part warehouse, part torture chamber. Both institutions, more cemetery for the barely living than hospital, uniformly fail those in its custody. One youngman, Snow, cuts himself, the reason for his incarceration, yet he regularly finds razors and continues to cut himself, eventually slitting his own wrists. Another youngman, forced to eat his own shit, also succumbs to despair and engineers his own escape. That Charles himself survives at all is a miracle and a puzzle.Over ten years we follow Charles’ trajectory to despair. Finally the release he deserves, the release we find ourselves hoping for, occurs and he moves out into the greater world. Yet, perhaps not surprisingly, even after even after he is freed, he remains imprisoned―in a carapace of hatred, his need for revenge; alone, unreachable, ignoring love, like glancing blows against the hard brilliant shell of his stilled heart.The Value of Rain is a difficult book to forget. When you reach the end you will realize as Charles’ uncle Breece warns, “Now the hard part, letting go, is up to you.” And you’ll realize letting go of this story and its haunted cast of characters is not so easy. less

Download links for: The Value of Rain

Advertising