Assessment:
Plot/Idea: Where When It Rains is an engrossing character-focused drama with a bold and riveting storyline. Riley's post coma experiences are intensely related, exposing the tortuous landscape of alcohol-fueled hedonism that he finds difficult to extricate himself from.
Prose: Duffy's text benefits from microscopic attention to detail that effectively heightens atmosphere and tension. The tight writing style neatly emphasizes the overpowering world of debauchery that Riley throws himself into following his accident.
Originality: Where When It Rains is a compelling and tightly focused drama, lightly peppered with pop culture references. While tales of the surreality, splendors, and agonies of the haze of substance use are familiar, Duffy's text is told in vivid, grimy detail.
Character/Execution: Duffy's intriguing protagonist, Riley, wakes up from a coma with vertigo and is inadvertently pulled into a hedonistic world of drink and drugs. He becomes part of a group of like-minded souls lost to narcotics and waywardness, with Duffy expertly highlighting their lifestyle choices.
Date Submitted: August 24, 2024
The thing that hits you first about Where When It Rains is the gorgeous writing. It takes its time describing just how a person moves, how they speak, how they smile, or drink. It’s written in first person from Riley’s point of view, and it burrows into his thoughts and feelings with unnerving accuracy. Even the times that he doesn’t know why he’s acting in a certain way or feeling a certain thing are unpacked and displayed with unusual deftness. So much so that it’s hard to fault Riley for the many of the varied, God-awful decisions he makes. Being so entwined in his mind and life, it’s hard to see how he could have behaved differently.
The writing also manages to capture the almost dream-like feeling of the social life of Phoenix. A kaleidoscope of days rolling into each other punctuated by fleeting
moments of true human interaction. As the novel crescendos and reality begins to bleed into the pages, the tempo and rhythm change with it.
Where When It Rains is a devastating study of the consequences of living as though the world and everything in it is meaningless. While the characters are a lost, numbed, and nihilistic lot, there’s an underlying thoughtfulness to them that makes them feel incredibly authentic. These are people who have been disappointed by life, time and time again, who don’t have the language for the emotions they’re feeling. So they brush them away with drugs and alcohol and the companionship of others who care as little as themselves. While other novels explore this sort of hard-nosed cynicism, few show the raw vulnerability and deep humanity lying under the façade.
As painful as it can be at times, Where When It Rains is lovely. Dark, bleak, and hopeless, but lovely nonetheless. The care with which it handles its broken but genuine characters, the way it allows the story to unravel at its own uneven pace, the wonderful little additions of seemingly superfluous storylines all build a powerful narrative that will stay with you long after it is done.
