The Rain Heron: Winner of the Age Book of the Year

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and tradingand forgetting.

But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a local myth, Ren is inexorably drawn into her impossible mission.

As their lives entwine, unravel and eruptas myths merge with realityboth Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love, and what they fear.

Robbie Arnotts stunning second novel remakes our relationship with the natural world. The Rain Heron is equal parts horror and wonder, and utterly gripping.

Reviews

Robbie Arnott is singlehandedly reinventing Australian literature. The Rain Heron is a soaring feat of the imagination. * Bram Presser *
In The Rain Heron, Robbie Arnott has turned his gaze to civilisations need to control and understand the natural world. This is a book full of heartits so richly imagined, inventive and beautifully written, with a strong message, but is never didactic. Its like nothing I've read and Arnott has quickly become one of my favourite authors. * J. P. Pomare *
A book that is not only a compelling, original read, but one that delivers hard truths that urgently need to be heard. * Books+Publishing *
A strange and curious bookthe craft is extraordinary.' * RN Bookshelf *
Arnotts vision coalesces into an affecting narrative, charged with symbolism and characters who hold trauma, pain and cruelty in the same spaceAs in his previous novel, Flames, Arnott is uncommonly adept at imbuing his work with a rich, lived-in feel, a world close to our own, filled with parallel myths and coinciding calamities. And as he did in Flames, Arnott reminds us he is one of the best prose stylists currently working in AustraliaHis is a lyrical, natural style that combines the expansiveness of a fable with fully realised detail. Arnotts sentences are truly a pleasure to read and the characters finely studied. * Saturday Paper *
The Rain Heron is literary art. Robbie Arnott has deftly crafted an audacious idea into an original, compelling workFlames is shrouded in a gothic, macabre Tasmanian setting. I thought it brilliant. The Rain Heron is even betterArnott blends his genres impeccably. Nothing is overdone or superfluousWhen the northerner, the seeker of squid ink, views a painting of the ocean, he is entranced by the quality and depth of its brightness and texture. It is an artwork laced with ink, a perfect metaphor for this luminous tale. * Australian *
With its emotional power and rich symbolism, The Rain Heron is an immersion in landscape, climate and an animal world that lives despite us, not for us. Robbie Arnott has imagined a creature, by turns exquisitely beautiful and terrifying, the likes of which I have never seen in Australian literature. His titular heron is a source of breathless wonder, of reverence. Arnott is just as wise with his human characters, with their wretchedness and elation, love and mistrust. There are images in this book that are entirely new to me, and I will cherish them. * Jock Serong *
An intuitive understanding of fauna and flora and humankinds problematic, often violent relationship with natureWritten with economy and grace, The Rain Heron is a timeless and poignant meditation on our fragile relationship with the natural environment. * Guardian *
Arnotts writing is clear and compelling, particularly in descriptions of the folkloric bird, with its rain-smeared transparency. * New Yorker *
The Rain Heron is genuinely and completely magnificenta magical thing. * Robert Lukins *
The Rain Heron is exquisite. Reading it feels like hearing a legend from our past, from our near future; like remembering something you had always known but somehow forgotten. It is both fantastical and deeply true. * Jane Rawson *
The Rain Heron is an intoxicating fable from an extraordinary imagination. Robbie Arnott writes like the words want to be his. * Anna Spargo-Ryan *
Robbie Arnott imagines a thoroughly strange, inky-dark land of the near future. Sharp and original, The Rain Heron is a beautiful novel about love, violence and redemption. * Laura Elvery *
Arnott weaves a narrative that feels both timely and timelessly engaging. A powerful meditation on human greed and frailty, The Rain Heron also leaves room for redemption. This bracing follow-up to Flames will reinforce Arnotts reputation for unusual, risk-taking literary fiction. * Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Australian Book Review *
An engrossing narrative of mystery and escape that treats the reader to bravura runs of writing, especially around the elements of water and fireYou never quite know which direction the story will take off in as it creates a new kind of fairytale for our fire-prone landscape. * Judges report on Flames, Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist 2019 *
A searing exploration of the entanglement of internal and external nature, and the human minds unconscious pull towards dominating the natural world. Arnott is brilliant at writing the natural world. * Kill Your Darlings *
A story of survival, an ecological thriller weighted with a mythological perspective, and a dystopian adventureThis is a novel that beautifully captures people at war with themselves, with each other, with natureand its a taut, tense thriller at the same timeIt is the perfect book to read now. It brings us closer and it steadies the world just a little. * Readings *
[The Rain Heron] would be a cautionary tale if the characters and the situations werent so close to our own. As it is, this just may be a history lesson in mans stupidity. * Herald Sun *
A strange and curious bookthe craft is extraordinary.' * RN Bookshelf *
For some artists, landscape is both inspiration and filter, and the Tasmanian wilderness is to Arnott what the Lakes District was to WordsworthFlames revealed Arnotts discipline in maintaining a line between the magical and the humdrumAnd he does this again. The natural world is real and marvellous in the sense that it is full of things at which to marvel, and the most shocking, most violent acts are not those of humans against humans but humans against the natural worldThe Rain Heron is an unsettling adult jigsaw. -- Helen Elliott * Monthly *
A beautifully poetic, hypnotic, barreling rideAs delightfully brutal as it is captivatingIt is as pitch-perfect a second novel as could have been anticipatedArnott displays stunning talent on every pageA stunning blend of mythologies, grim society, and fatefully interconnected lives. * The Millions *
UnsettlingArnott writes vibrantly about the harsh wonder of nature, his vivid characters becoming almost animal themselves. * Observer *
Arnotts writing is as refreshing as a wash of rain; no one is producing fiction quite like him[His] lyrical writing is saturated with mystery and old magic...The Rain Heron reads like a fable, exquisite and melancholy, and Arnotts love of landscape and nature is the most striking aspect of the novel[It blends] what feels like timeless mythology with a dire warning for our future. * ArtsHub *
Daring, atmospheric...The novel moves at a quicksilver pace, shimmering with menace and electric visions of forests and lake-filled valleys. * New York Times *
The Rain Heron is an evocative and poetic ecological mythMesmerising and beautifully writtenEach narrative thread could stand as a shocking, beautiful and moral short story in its own right, but Robbie Arnott weaves them seamlessly together into a satisfying whole. * Scotsman *
Arnotts eco-fable, set in a politically broken near future, explores the constant push-pull that exists between our capacity for enchantment and our need to exploit what we findIts sad and satisfying. * The Times *
Full of enchanted realism[Arnott] writes on behalf of the fierce dedication necessary for anyone to be her best self. This is a lofty ambition but it is what great stories demand from us: figurative blood, figurative tears, and a commitment to witness the world in all its wonder. * Age *
The Rain Heron is unlike anything I have ever read. As luminescent as it is devastating, Arnotts tightly wrought storytelling reveals the myriad harms we wreak both on our planet and on each other. It is mesmerising. * Ruth Gilligan *
If you like to be amazed, confounded and left wide-eyed in wonder by an authors breathtaking audacity and incandescent story-telling ability, this is a novel for you. * Matilda Bookshop *
The Rain Heron confirms [Robbie Arnotts] place as one of Australias leading young novelistsAs myths collide with reality, Arnotts imaginative dark novel ends with a sobering uplift, reaffirming that ultimately relationships and kindness matter. * Canberra Times *
Arnotts eco-fable, set in a politically broken near future, explores the constant push-pull that exists between our capacity for enchantment and our need to exploit what we find. Its sad and satisfying. * The Times *
The real dealPhenomenally original, an exquisite way with words.' * Bri Lee *
Powerfully evocative. * SA Weekend *
An absolutely stunning novelA tale of myths and legends that also looks at climate change, corporation, power and how we fight for survival. I thought it was phenomenal. With Flames and now The Rain Heron, Robbie Arnott has become one of my absolute favourite authors. * Simon Savidge *
One of the most original and unique stories I have maybe ever readI absolutely wolfed it down. I loved how much it made me think about the give-and-take relationship humans have with natureIt is beautiful. * Read Your Feelings *
A journey into a perilous world where the horror of human greed collides with the eloquence of nature. * Leah Kaminsky *
'Superb descriptions of nature and weather, of human emotion and animal instinct...evoke a landscape that is both startlingly immediate and mysteriously otherworldly: the perfect setting for a tense narrative of eco-disaster and fragile endurance. At once an urgent thriller and an elegiac fable, this mesmerizing tale is as lyrical as it is suspenseful. * Kirkus *
The Rain Heron is a patient and rooted fable told as naturally as a tree grows. With timeless and captivating prose, Robbie Arnott has a talent for making it look easy. I was transfixed. * Catherine Lacey, author

Author Bio

Robbie Arnotts acclaimed debut, Flames (2018), won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award and a Tasmanian Premiers Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premiers Literary Award, a New South Wales Premiers Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Not the Booker Prize. His follow-up, The Rain Heron (2020), won the Age Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Literary Prize and an Adelaide Festival Award for Literature. Robbies third novel, Limberlost, will be published in 2022. He lives in Hobart.