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I bought History of the Rain because Melissa Firman said I should, and because I trust this fine reader/writer/reviewer.

I read it because it is glorious. Irish and tangled and and caught, at times, in its own whirl, its own strange uncharted loveliness. It is a story about failure that is, itself, a victory of style, foresight, love. A book of tangents and a-chronology, of curves and mist. A book that, on its final page, does not, will not end.

Ruth Swain lives by a river in a part of the world where it always rains, where family is good, where the absence of a brother and a father requires Ruth herself, sick and perhaps dying, to write her family's wobbling story down. Into that story she writes the stories of the books her father loved and endowed to her, the mythology and the hope, the fortitude and the flood.

Look at what Niall Williams does with a character:

Two-handed, Mrs Quinty lifts the glasses free of the minor parsnip of her nose, holds them just in front of her and scrutinises the dust gathered there. Rain makes bars of light and dark down her face and mine, as if we're inside the jail of it.

Look at what he does with landscape:

The fields are wrapped in soft grey tissues of weather.

Look what he does with memory:

I know that field. Years ago I went there. It's rough and wildly sloping, hoof-pocked and rushy-bearded both. Running down it is bump and splash, is ankle-twist treachery. You get going and you can't stop. You're heading for the river. And you can't help but scream.

And (knowingly, truthfully, achingly absolutely), look what he does with the truth:

Writing of course is a kind of sickness. Well people don't do it. Art is basically impossible. Edna O'Brien said she was surprised Van Gogh only cut off one ear. Robert Lowell said that he felt was a blazing out, flashes, nerve jabs in the moments when the poem was coming. I myself have had no blazing out, and don't suppose it's all that good for your constitution. To stop himself from taking off into the air Ted Hughes had to keep repeating over and over Beneath my feet is the earth, some part of the surface of the earth. The thing is, writing is a sickness only cured by writing. That's the impossible part. 

More than 350 pages, and every page this good.

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Oh, those beautiful pottery ladies. There I was, minding my own clay business, when I saw Karen the Good, who also goes by Queen of Wayne, sneak by. What is that lady doing? I wondered, then went back to trying to figure out how to make my latest project stable.

The next time I looked up, the ladies had gathered around and they were singing. They were singing a birthday song.

How I love them all.

(Bill, the honorary pottery lady, took the photo of the group, but I love him, too.)

So a huge thank you to my friends, and to Karen, for remembering—and for singing—so poignantly well. And the timing is—well—something else, for just this morning I had been remembering a surprise party my mother had thrown for me when I was sixteen years old. Somehow she'd gotten Jim Clancy, Radnor High basketball star, to my basement, along with ice skaters and other friends. I had not had the slightest inkling that something was in the works. I miss my mother on many days, and always on my birthday, and there were the ladies, on this day, stepping in.

So who was the teen me? I write of her here, on Dear Teen Me, today. The piece begins like this:

You do not have to be good. You don’t have to try so hard. You don’t have to stay so very still inside that box that you have built up for yourself.

Life is meant for living.

Listen.

On a day in which so much kindness overflows that I hardly know what to do, or how many ways I can say thank you, I share these beautiful things as well:

Shelf Awareness shared the Going Over trailer as the Trailer of the Day, here.

Sarah Laurence reviewed Going Over so incredibly beautifully here.

And Melissa Firman very kindly makes room for, and say such nice things about, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, here.

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I began a blogging conversation with Melissa Firman of The Betty and Boo Chronicles so long ago that I can't remember the first prompt, the earliest words.  Melissa and I share many things—proximity (at least until a transfer took her west), friends, a love for our children, a love for books—and the first time I actually met Melissa was on a bitter cold night, when she came to a talk I was giving about the impact of place on my work.  She came bearing books, my own.  She has built, over time, an embarrassingly generous Beth Kephart library.  Even as she does so many things, for so many others, and even as she keeps her Facebook friends abreast of the special people in her life.

And so Melissa's words today, about Small Damages, are the words of one who has read an oeuvre with great care.  They are the words of someone who has carefully, patiently watched my work evolve over time.  Reading Melissa's blog post was, to me, akin to reading a scholarly piece.  I learned so much and became so absorbed in Melissa's thinking that it wasn't until the end that I remembered that she was writing about me.  This post was so exceptional that my publicist, Jessica Shoffel, sent an email earlier:  Making sure you saw this one.

I share Melissa's words at the end of a day of many emotions.  We honored our George Shaw this morning at a beautiful service in which grandchildren read, a son eloquently remembered, and family and friends and neighbors knit tight.  How proud George is, looking down, on his gigantic community.  His son referred to George as an extraordinary ordinary man.  My own son, sitting near me in the pews, said later that that is the best kind of man. 

After the service and lunch I came home to read Handling the Truth one last time, for it is bound for copyediting soon.  I'll never quite forget the note Lauren Marino, my Gotham editor, wrote last night to tell me that we are entering the book's next phase.  Having just sat here today and read all 61,000 words through again, I hope it is all right to say here that I am so at peace with Truth.

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I am happy to report (at 5:16 AM) that I have successfully awakened from the dream (nightmare) in which I arrived at a conference to give my Dangerous Neighbors talk with only my The Heart is Not a Size notes in hand.  One should be able to speak off the cuff about one's own books, you say?  Tell that to Beth, the nightmare dreamer.

Sidenote:  Melissa Firman, you may find it interesting that you were the one tasked with introducing me.  You did an excellent job.

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