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Memories in the Rain

Author: Naomi Salman

In Aloisville, the rain washes away your sins, your past, your memory, you. No one knows when it started, or why, but Laverne has been keeping a journal and performing experiments. She now knows how much rain it takes to wash away a moment of your time and how much it takes to leave you an empty shell. It rains every day now, and her notes cover the walls of her house, reminding her, lest she forget. The notes talk about how much rain does how much damage, about what they have learned over time, about the people who stayed out in the rain too long, about the border and the guards.  The town is trapped, someone is keeping them there, and they rarely brave the rain to see each other. But her neighbor has a dangerous idea, and she wants Laverne’s help.

Nothing But the Rain is a strange epistolary novel, told through Laverne’s fractured thoughts. At first, we wonder – is this an older woman dealing with dementia, becoming paranoid as her own mind betrays her? The parallels are clear, and they add a somberness and double meaning to this dystopian story.

In the vein of classic horror like Night of the Living Dead, we never get answers. We start in the middle of the action, examining the effects. Like Laverne, we don’t know when or why this started, if the contamination in the rain is local or worldwide, natural or the result of some lab experiment gone awry or biological warfare. We never know who the guards around the town are or why the town is being sequestered. We only know what fractured moments Laverne has captured on paper, on the

Image by Souvick Ghosh from Pixabay

walls of her house, on every empty surface that serves to bolster memory. It’s a fantastic idea, but the delivery is a little too vague, and when it becomes clear that this isn’t a mental illness story, the creepiness becomes unbelievable. Something is lacking here. It’s not in the idea, but the sparseness of the delivery, the inability to know characters and bond, to see what they have lost and what they fear.

Nothing But the Rain is short though, and the slow-burn attempted paranoia building abruptly gives way to action. This dissonance between the parts of the story – slow then chaotic – was part of my disenchantment. But the story also had its moments, especially the revelation in the end, the “why” behind these collected recollections, and the revelation of the audience.

The idea has merit, and this novella certainly isn’t bad, but we needed more to become terrified, to follow the degeneration of normal. It certainly can be done – think of Stephen King’s The Mist. Here we get more of an outline, an unlikely confluence of events, a snapshot moment in time. Good, but not great.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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