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One Hundred Days of Rain
Did she say, at the beginning, that it rained every day? She was wrong. She misspoke. She didn’t mean it.... No. It did not rain every day. But it rained for a hundred days, that year, which was enough—more than enough, even.
In elliptical prose by turn haunting and crystalline, Carellin Brooks' One Hundred Days of Rain enumerates an unnamed narrator's encounters with that most quotidian of subjects: rain.
In the wake of her recent disastrous breakup, the narrator must rebuild a life from the bottom up. Whether riding the bus with her small child, searching for an apartment to rent, or merely calculating out the cost of meagre lunches, the world forever intrudes. The narrator's compulsive cataloguing of rain's vicissitudes forms a kind of quiet meditation: an acknowledgement of the ongoing weight of sadness, the texture of it, and its composition—not only emotional weight, but also the persistent presence of all the things a person deals with when she’s rebuilding a life.
In elliptical prose by turn haunting and crystalline, Carellin Brooks' One Hundred Days of Rain enumerates an unnamed narrator's encounters with that most quotidian of subjects: rain.
In the wake of her recent disastrous breakup, the narrator must rebuild a life from the bottom up. Whether riding the bus with her small child, searching for an apartment to rent, or merely calculating out the cost of meagre lunches, the world forever intrudes. The narrator's compulsive cataloguing of rain's vicissitudes forms a kind of quiet meditation: an acknowledgement of the ongoing weight of sadness, the texture of it, and its composition—not only emotional weight, but also the persistent presence of all the things a person deals with when she’s rebuilding a life.
203 pages, Paperback
First published March 24, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
June 10, 2026
This book reads more like a creative writing exercise than a novel. While I could appreciate the intentionally repetitive and predictably interspersed descriptions of rain for their role in suspense-building—the quotidian content of most of this book's chapters makes each new bit of narrative information received feel exciting, like an hour of sunshine between downpours—the book is obviously driven by concept rather than by character, and that's not why most of us read novels.
January 19, 2022
Un style différent que je ne suis pas habitué de lire...
November 14, 2019
I really disliked this book. It is dismal and dreary.
It features a self-involved, abusive woman who cares more about her clothing than her son, and who uses her son as a weapon in her arguments with her ex-wife and with his father - so not just abusive to the adults in her life but also her own child -UGH. Why do authors try to make such ugly characters sympathetic? There is zero sympathy in this character and zero sympathy from me for her - only disgust with the author for trying this trick.
After that, the book has, as promised, description of 100 days of rain. It is forced and pretentious, and when looking at Vancouver's actual weather and climate, often also inaccurate. Plus, dreary and dreary.
The book is also inaccurate in other ways. E.g. no one in Vancouver calls the SkyTrain the 'elevated train' or 'the el train'. E.g. Main St. and Adanac St. never meet. And so on.
The book tries too hard to be clever and artistic and fails on both counts. It lacks any type of plot or character development to make up the difference, and the protagonist is unlikeable and uninteresting.
I will read no more books by this author.
It features a self-involved, abusive woman who cares more about her clothing than her son, and who uses her son as a weapon in her arguments with her ex-wife and with his father - so not just abusive to the adults in her life but also her own child -UGH. Why do authors try to make such ugly characters sympathetic? There is zero sympathy in this character and zero sympathy from me for her - only disgust with the author for trying this trick.
After that, the book has, as promised, description of 100 days of rain. It is forced and pretentious, and when looking at Vancouver's actual weather and climate, often also inaccurate. Plus, dreary and dreary.
The book is also inaccurate in other ways. E.g. no one in Vancouver calls the SkyTrain the 'elevated train' or 'the el train'. E.g. Main St. and Adanac St. never meet. And so on.
The book tries too hard to be clever and artistic and fails on both counts. It lacks any type of plot or character development to make up the difference, and the protagonist is unlikeable and uninteresting.
I will read no more books by this author.
April 9, 2021
Read in one (dry) evening- I was struck by how much emotion and story hung behind the veil of constant, poetic, and real rainstorms.
Spoilers bellow after all the rain rain rain
A cursory glance at other reviews paints the main character as abusive when I read the entire point as being the main character is escaping an abusive relationship where her ex uses the cops and lawyers and threats of child protective services as a way of begging attention, continuing harm and threatening worse...but I guess that’s up to interpretation? (Kinda? Not really) and also the prickly sadness of still missing this difficult hurtful person, of mourning, of rebuilding and continuing...
Hard rec for those who value prose and nuance and emotional introspection over over explained plot or reductive blanket statements like the ones I’ve made above while trying to summarize this text
Spoilers bellow after all the rain rain rain
A cursory glance at other reviews paints the main character as abusive when I read the entire point as being the main character is escaping an abusive relationship where her ex uses the cops and lawyers and threats of child protective services as a way of begging attention, continuing harm and threatening worse...but I guess that’s up to interpretation? (Kinda? Not really) and also the prickly sadness of still missing this difficult hurtful person, of mourning, of rebuilding and continuing...
Hard rec for those who value prose and nuance and emotional introspection over over explained plot or reductive blanket statements like the ones I’ve made above while trying to summarize this text
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 8, 2019
Vi är i Vancouver. I den här romanen är regnet en fiende och en påträngande kuliss till ett relationsdrama. I min marginalia blev det en mängd utropstecken när en av karaktärerna plötsligt säger "- Two to Nanaimo." i färjeterminalen, precis när jag själv smidde liknande resplaner.
March 27, 2015
A thoughtful collection of vignettes, a chronicle of Vancouver's weather.
May 31, 2024
It definitely took me awhile to figure out what this book was about, but I kinda like describing life by talking about the rain. As a fellow PNW resident, I definitely get that! Would have liked a bit more of an ending.
August 16, 2018
A mood novel that is more meditation than plot. Absolutely loved that the narrator only rode a bike (in the rain!) or a bus. Had the pleasure of reading this while on vacation in Vancouver. It's myriad and delightful descriptions of the rain helped counter the gorgeous weather we were experiencing and any dreams I had about possibly moving to Vancouver lol.
September 27, 2018
DNF - this book is a simple concept that goes on far too long. There’s no story here in the soggy prose. There’s nothing to connect to - we have virtually anonymous characters - an S and an M. We don’t get much on them or the narrator but we get a WHOLE lot about the various ways rain falls on Vancouver. Tighten up the concept, make this a short story. Done. Next.
June 28, 2020
Poetic portrayal of the different kinds of rain in Vancouver through a inside look at an emotionally abusive same-sex relationship. Each page is a treat.
December 18, 2023
It felt like 10000 days of rain. If you like descriptions, you might like this book. It just wasn’t my type,of read.
July 12, 2025
Have you ever heard the rain? Loved this prose diary of feelings, an accountant of the end of a relationship and the confusion and remnants we are left to deal with. It also felt like a love story with Vancouver - the rain - the many moods of rain. Completely identifiable.
May 23, 2016
Carellin Brooks's One hundred days of rain is a difficult book to review. On the one hand, the story, set in Vancouver, is pretty simple: The unnamed protagonist is breaking up with her wife and is attempting to build a new life. She has an ex-husband, the father of her five-year-old child. A hundred short chapters in the present tense. No quotation marks (which I know drives certain readers nuts). It rains a lot and Brooks describes the rain in at least fifty different ways. Can I make it sound less appealing?
A Rhodes Scholar, Brooks is a poet who has published two books of poetry and edited two anthologies. This is her first novel. Anyone interested in writing, anyone looking for an original work of literary art, anyone willing to be caught up in Brooks's extraordinary prose for the imagination and possibilities in the language should read One hundred days of rain.
But rather than assert, let me sample the prose virtually at random to give you a taste:
"Rain pummels tiny fists on the window. Tinkles and dances, a small drumming like fingers on a tabletop. Rain gusts and smatters against the glass, pushed by wind. She imagines herself reaching through the phone cord, along the wires, to change that voice to something gasping and frightened. A desire so vivid she feels her hands clutching, the strain of the tendons."
A description of Saturday morning routine with her son: "She bakes. Cornbread, banana bread, puffed yellow German pancake. Something hot to table. Inside they sit ignoring the streaming gloomy world. Lifting cakes still warm to their mouths, buttering the crumbly slices with voluptuous concentration. Their world shrunk to yellow box, small and warm and most importantly dry."
That quotation, by the way, is half of a chapter.
One more—although it is tempting to go on quoting for pages: "Easter. A time of renewal or so it's said, bruited about even, the possibility of growth. So many chances for anniversaries and fresh starts and her is another. She arises from her dented bed filled with resolution. She will sort that errant paper, the piles of it she's been augmenting all year. She will put her taxes into order this time, really. Everything due at the library will be returned, all the languishing dry cleaning rescued, perhaps she will even begin cleaning for their move. The sills and lintels can't accumulate much dust in a month, can they? It isn't too early to wipe down her fridge now, surely?"
Note the metaphors, similes: "tiny fists," "like fingers on a tabletop." Yet so much is pure precise description: "streaming gloomy world," "dented bed," "the languishing dry cleaning." The sentences—the sentence fragments even—are vivid with detail, with sensation. Adding "really" to the sentence about taxes adds a paragraph about unkept promises in a word.
A back-cover blurb says it better than I: "Carellin Brooks offers a loud and persistent rejoinder to the idea of 'the pathetic fallacy': the internal and external do coalesce, and they do so at the apex of the most precise and revealing sentences I have read in years."
There. Have I made One hundred days of rain more appealing?
A Rhodes Scholar, Brooks is a poet who has published two books of poetry and edited two anthologies. This is her first novel. Anyone interested in writing, anyone looking for an original work of literary art, anyone willing to be caught up in Brooks's extraordinary prose for the imagination and possibilities in the language should read One hundred days of rain.
But rather than assert, let me sample the prose virtually at random to give you a taste:
"Rain pummels tiny fists on the window. Tinkles and dances, a small drumming like fingers on a tabletop. Rain gusts and smatters against the glass, pushed by wind. She imagines herself reaching through the phone cord, along the wires, to change that voice to something gasping and frightened. A desire so vivid she feels her hands clutching, the strain of the tendons."
A description of Saturday morning routine with her son: "She bakes. Cornbread, banana bread, puffed yellow German pancake. Something hot to table. Inside they sit ignoring the streaming gloomy world. Lifting cakes still warm to their mouths, buttering the crumbly slices with voluptuous concentration. Their world shrunk to yellow box, small and warm and most importantly dry."
That quotation, by the way, is half of a chapter.
One more—although it is tempting to go on quoting for pages: "Easter. A time of renewal or so it's said, bruited about even, the possibility of growth. So many chances for anniversaries and fresh starts and her is another. She arises from her dented bed filled with resolution. She will sort that errant paper, the piles of it she's been augmenting all year. She will put her taxes into order this time, really. Everything due at the library will be returned, all the languishing dry cleaning rescued, perhaps she will even begin cleaning for their move. The sills and lintels can't accumulate much dust in a month, can they? It isn't too early to wipe down her fridge now, surely?"
Note the metaphors, similes: "tiny fists," "like fingers on a tabletop." Yet so much is pure precise description: "streaming gloomy world," "dented bed," "the languishing dry cleaning." The sentences—the sentence fragments even—are vivid with detail, with sensation. Adding "really" to the sentence about taxes adds a paragraph about unkept promises in a word.
A back-cover blurb says it better than I: "Carellin Brooks offers a loud and persistent rejoinder to the idea of 'the pathetic fallacy': the internal and external do coalesce, and they do so at the apex of the most precise and revealing sentences I have read in years."
There. Have I made One hundred days of rain more appealing?
April 18, 2015
ARC copy. A dark series of vignettes chronicling divorce, blended families, and rain. Rich, lyrical descriptions of Vancouver, its inhabitants, and neighbourhoods. Author has an obvious poetic talent. However, the novel has little to no plot and shallow character development. For me, these are the essential bones of a novel, what keeps me engaged. This book may appeal to those who enjoy reading for the sake of reading, for luscious juxtapositions of works, for lyrical composition and phrasing, but for me it was a frustrating and unengaging read.
December 15, 2015
An odd book, with some quite good writing but with a really dreary and boring theme. I started skimming about half way through, just hoping to find out whether anything actually happens. It does, it rains.
Nobody has a name, her son is referred to as the boy. Her ex is always called the father of her child. Others are known by their initials. It is all very precious, and the only action in the book is rain falling. What a bore.
Nobody has a name, her son is referred to as the boy. Her ex is always called the father of her child. Others are known by their initials. It is all very precious, and the only action in the book is rain falling. What a bore.
August 10, 2017
I'm disappointed. this had so much potential to be a really meaningful work. although beautiful, the story does nowhere and the theme of rain gets tired and repetitive, then annoying,about midway through- nit bc rain keeps being mentioned but bc it's never different, never expands. I had to push myself through the last third, hoping for some resolution of the main relationship, but nothing happens. lack of development, overall.
September 9, 2015
My review can be found at: https://roughghosts.wordpress.com/201...
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January 11, 2016rain, rain, rain, rain. *crazy face*
April 8, 2017
3.47 stars
April 23, 2017
There was a particular dramatic irony in this book that was doubled for me as I read it during the spring in Toronto on all the rainy days. Excellent descriptions of weather (never thought I would write that) that initially were a little repetitive but then grew beautiful as they coincided so strongly with the narrative being told. I'm personally so affected by weather that it's nice to see that represented in literature.
January 4, 2018
Even after reading the synopsis of this book i didn't know what to expect truely. I really enjoyed it. It was a story from the outside looking at woman through love, loss, anger, happiness and just everyday life.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews