The Small Rain

Infobox Book
name = The Small Rain
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = cover of the 1984 edition of "The Small Rain"
author = Madeleine L'Engle
illustrator =
cover_artist = Sam Salant
country = United States
language = English
series = Katherine Forrester
genre = Bildungsroman (coming of age novel)
publisher = The Vanguard Press (1945)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1984)
release_date = 1945
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 371 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-374-26637-9
preceded_by = 18 Washington Square, South: A Comedy in One Act (play)
followed_by = Ilsa

"The Small Rain" is a semi-autobiographical novel by Madeleine L'Engle, about the many difficulties in the life of talented pianist Katherine Forrester between the ages of 10 and 18. Published in 1945 by The Vanguard Press, it was the first of L'Engle's long list of books, and was reprinted in 1984. L'Engle began work on it in college, and completed it while an actress in New York.cite book
last = L'Engle
first = Madeleine
authorlink = Madeleine L'Engle
coauthors =
title = The Small Rain (introduction)
publisher = Farrar, Straus & Giroux
date = 1984
location = New York
pages = vii-xii
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 0-374-26637-9 ]

Plot Summary

Young Katherine has not seen her mother Julie in three years, since the latter was in an accident that ended her career as a pianist. Katherine has been studying piano herself, doing a little professional acting, and living with "Aunt Manya", a family friend known to the rest of the world as Madame Sergeivna, a famous actress on the Broadway stage. When she is ten, Katherine is reunited with Julie, and lives with her until Julie's premature death four years later.

Manya marries Katherine's father, a composer named Tom Forrester, with whom Katherine has a cordial but not especially close relationship, making Katherine doubly distant from the two of them. However, after awhile, Manya's love for her begins to melt Katherine's iciness. However, just as Katherine starts truly loving Manya, Tom and Manya send her away to a boarding school in Switzerland. She is miserable there, unable to make connections with the other girls or the teachers, who are mostly cold and autocratic; in addition, her piano teacher doesn't mesh with her at all. This continues until Justin Vigneras, the piano teacher she was originally meant to study with but who was away at the beginning of the term, comes back. Katherine adores him, and is gratified that there is finally someone at school who understands and supports her passion for music and her need to practice. She also learns to get along better with her peers after the arrival of Sarah Courmont, a girl she previously met briefly on her seventh birthday in New York; the two begin to form an intense friendship. However, school officials misinterpret that friendship as another deep attraction, and Sarah becomes distant with Katherine after Miss Valentine interrogates the girls. Just as Katherine's relationship with Justin begins to develop into a closer relationship, he leaves the school.

After suffering through the rest of school without Justin or the Sarah she once knew and a brief romance with Charles Bejart, a young physician and Manya's adopted son, Katherine returns to New York. There she studies with her mother's old teacher, whose style is extremely intense and different from Justin's, shares an apartment with Sarah, who is now an actress, and becomes engaged to Pete, who used to help look after Katherine at Manya's theater. She also meets Felix Bodeway, Sarah's friend, who appears in A Severed Wasp, though she's not often comfortable with the shady, questionable world that he seems to represent. Ultimately Katherine is betrayed by both Pete and Sarah, as Pete and Sarah become romantically involved with each other. Katherine leaves them behind and, upon Manya's urging, returns to Justin, ostensibly to study with him in Paris.

Context

In her introduction to the 1984 edition of "The Small Rain", Madeleine L'Engle mentions a number of similarities between Katherine's early life and her own. Both lived in New York and worked in the theater, but had aspirations in another field of artistic endeavor. L'Engle says that Katherine "approached her work with the same determination and single-mindedness with which I approached mine." Both had mothers who played the piano, and both lost a parent while in their teens, although with L'Engle it was her father. Both had a slight limp from one leg being slightly shorter than the other.cite book
last = L'Engle
first = Madeleine
authorlink = Madeleine L'Engle
coauthors =
title = A Circle of Quiet
publisher = Farrar, Straus & Giroux
date = 1972
location = New York
pages = pg 142
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 0-374-12374-8 ] Both attended boarding school in Switzerland, where they were "lonely and unhappy." Both wrote to their families at a classmate's suggestion, asking to come home, but to no avail.cite book
last = L'Engle
first = Madeleine
authorlink = Madeleine L'Engle
coauthors =
title = The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
publisher = Farrar, Straus & Giroux
date = 1974
location = New York
pages = pg 100
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 0-374-27174-7 ] Nevertheless, L'Engle states that "The deeper I got into the novel, the more Katherine became Katherine and the less Madeleine. But we are sisters, there's no doubt about that."

Some of these same elements reappear in other early novels by L'Engle. Flip (Philippa Hunter) of "And Both Were Young" is another aspiring artist who attends a boarding school in Switzerland, initially fails to get on well with peers, and has trouble with an athletics instructor over one leg being shorter than the other. Virginia ("Vee") Bowen of "A Winter's Love" (the protagonist's daughter) attends a similar school and is a future writer. However, Vee's problems, such as they are, stem from difficulties at home rather than at school.

ubsequent editions and related works

page notes the book's provenance: "This book has been especially adapted for young people by the author from the first part of her novel, "The Small Rain"." Dedicated to L'Engle's father, Charles Wadsworth Camp (as is "The Small Rain"), "Prelude" covers the events of Katherine's life until Justin leaves the boarding school. The ending of "Prelude" is slightly more upbeat than the corresponding text in "The Small Rain", with mutual promises that they will see each other again. By contrast, the same scene in "The Small Rain" ends with the words, "She...sat there until she saw Justin leave the studio, carrying the music he hadn't already packed, walking happily, he head held high and proud, out of her life." Another major difference is that "Prelude" omits Justin's drunken advances toward the still-underage Katherine in Paris, shortly before she returns to school without him. The scene in which Miss Valentine interrogates Katherine and Sarah about their friendship (which does not directly mention homosexuality) is left intact.

In 1984, "The Small Rain" was reissued by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the publishers of nearly all of Madeleine L'Engle's other novels since "A Wrinkle in Time" (1962). This current edition, ISBN 0-374-26637-9, features a dust jacket by Sam Salant and a new introduction by L'Engle, in which she mentions the continuation of Katherine's story in her 1982 novel "A Severed Wasp". This sequel returns to Katherine as an elderly widow, looking back on her life while trying to survive and unravel a frightening mystery at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York.

References