The Man Who Rained - Tapa blanda

The most compelling thing about this book... is not the mere plot but Shaw's striking facility with the language... this is such an imaginative novel, written with such attention to words, and such a sense of wonder, that those who savour such skills will find themselves thoroughly transported. * Observer * The Man Who Rained is delicately crafted... Its story haunting and thoroughly, charmingly different -- Alison Flood * Sunday Times *

From the Costa Prize shortlisted-author of The Girl with Glass Feet comes another magical novel of love, discovery and nature. The Man Who Rained is a work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination, a modern-day fable about the elements of love. When Elsa's father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to escape - from New York, her job, her boyfriend - to somewhere new, anonymous, set apart. For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an aeroplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest - drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens. In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest - can they survive at all? The Man Who Rained is a work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination, a modern-day fable about the elements of love.