History of the rain - Niall Williams

We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those
who only live now in the telling. In Faha, County Clare, everyone is a
long story... Bedbound in her attic room beneath the
falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth
Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery
of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow
faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain,
her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil -
via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine
hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in
her room, beneath the rain. The stories - of her golden twin
brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged
pursuit of the Swains' Impossible Standard and forever falling just
short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst
farming land in Ireland - pour forth in Ruthie's still, small, strong,
hopeful voice. A celebration of books, love and the healing power of the
imagination, this is an exquisite, funny, moving novel in which every
sentence sings.