Book Review: The Rain Artist by Claire Rudy Foster (2024)
Moonstruck Books
In the ecological hellscape world of The Rain Artist, rain falls only in ballrooms and penthouses, a manufactured novelty experienced exclusively by paragons of industry and commerce. Earth is ravaged husk marked by storms of copper dust, ever-growing plastic islands, and chemical swamps that extended to the horizon. The majority of people reside in overpopulated urban centers, surviving on hydration slurries and lab-grown nutrients while desperately clinging to a hardscrabble existence where the wolves of destitution are never far from the door.
At the heart of the novel is Celine Broussard, the last in a multi-generational line of boutique umbrella makers, who supplies the accessories to elite rain parties in New York City. She is gearing up for a celebration of particular prestige where a man named Robert Weiss, whose multinational corporations and market influence have made him a literal quadrillionaire, will retire and turn over his empire. Little does Robert know, the party to mark his retirement is a murder plot cobbled together by his sons, and by the time his blood is spilled alongside the artificial rain, Celine Broussard will be framed as his assassin and on the run from corporate-controlled police.
Alongside her ex-con associate, Paul, Celine makes a desperate flight through the underground of New York with Robert’s corpse in tow, hoping to first escape pursuit and then clear her name. Along the way, the unlikely fugitives fall into the company Yochanna, an aspiring artist who has recently become pregnant under heartbreaking circumstances. Together, the trio make for Otzara, the Weiss family’s private compound and last preserve for much of the world’s lost flora and fauna, seeking justice.
A World Without Tears
I was highly impressed with the holistic and unflinching nature of Foster’s vision for societal devolution presented in The Rain Artist. While the marquee horrors of the story focus on environmental and ecological destruction, Foster gives great attention to mapping the parallel declines in social and economic spheres, and approaches these with greater creative depth than many authors writing in dystopian spaces. The subversion of messianic social programs was a particularly interesting inclusion, as things like universal healthcare, basic income, and a wealth of other social safety nets all exist and are supplied to the population of The Rain Artist, but distinctly limited by the constraints of the capitalist society in which they have developed.
In some ways, the world is unchanged: young people fret about getting older, commuters gaze mindlessly into their screens, and the ultra-rich galivant through circles wholly closed to the common person, wielding influence and enacting decisions that affect the powerless billions with no real consideration beyond their person. These familiar elements mingle with the fantastic, and this serves as an effective reminder to readers that the realities of The Rain Artist–and its garish horrors–are a potential outgrowth of our present course.
Alongside the excellent worldbuilding and thoughful explorations, there are more insidious social developments which contribute to the starkness and severity of the novel. Specifically, this is an endgame capitalist society where opportunities are so scarce for the working class that the idea of being routinely sexually harassed and even assaulted is an employment condition that many will accept. Depictions of this are brief-but-explicit, not gratuitous, and I think Foster has done an exemplary job of poignantly illustrating how the hardships of poverty cannot be summarized by a bank balance alone.
Many of the modern novels that try to provide commentaria on social ills fall into roteness, oversimplification, or presentism, but The Rain Artist provided a remarkably mature and refreshing exploration of this front, demonstrating through complex engagements how inherently corruptive the unchecked proliferation of impoverishment truly is. Bravo.
A Many-Eyed Storm
The pacing of most scenes in The Rain Artist is pleasantly patient, happy to flex practiced descriptive muscles and adopt a reflective tone to illustrate a scene and its adjacencies. While many emergent speculative fiction writers have mastered creating tight, hyperpolished prose and cringe-clever descriptive passages, Foster does it with a voice that is more authentic in its convictions than many of their contemporaries. They have cultivated a clear, present, ruminative tone which makes their writing both distinctive and enjoyable to read.
Unfortunately, this trademark tone isn’t consistently present throughout the novel, and stretches where it is absent feel slightly flat. Foster is often content to languidly describe a tangential scene or element, pushing on at length in order drive home something illustrative, but in lesser measure sometimes moves too abruptly through critical scenes which bring a key narrative arc or plot development to conclusion (here I wish I could engage with explicit spoilers). At times, it felt like the novel was struggling to find a comfortable cadence, and several chapters seemed like they would have benefited from the adopting the cogitative tone found elsewhere in the novel. In the latter half of the story, I felt the book was ending too quickly, barreling through interesting scenes and setpieces with none of the patience that got us there, and the novel was too much a preface for things to come.
I generally appreciate Foster’s creative choices in The Rain Artist, and the unevenness of some of the subplots doesn’t significantly diminish the novel as whole, but does create a slightly uncertain reading experience. Foster feels very much like a writer who occasionally feels uncomfortable mapping out the mechanics of certain scenes (for example, physical conflicts), rushing to a conclusion or filling in the most obvious course instead finding the introspection featured in their character-driven scenes.
My only other criticism is that there are a handful of elements in the plot which I found a touch hard to believe, and suspect they were improvised in order to set up particular scenes along the narrative. When framed for the murder, Celine and Paul insist on keeping the corpse of Robert Weiss, and that returning it to the family is a plausible way for them to clear their name and escape to safety. This didn’t seem to align with depictions of the Weiss family elsewhere in the novel, and despite leaning into all of the verisimilitudinous goodwill I could muster, I never quite got on board with this plot-critical motivation. This is hardly an uncommon sin in modern literature, but I do wonder if something more effective could have been managed.
Final Thoughts
In The Rain Artist, Claire Rudy Foster has created a remarkably visceral futuristic setting that feels both fantastical and tragically possible from our vantage in the twenty-first century. Finance, nutrition, government, employment, and personal ambition have all been largely reimagined as a result of the toxification of the planet, and Foster has engaged each element of society with a considered and creative hand, presenting a startling vision that sets this work many other dystopian literary efforts.
The Rain Artist excels in juxtaposing a horrific vision of the future with instances of resonant beauty that serve to keep the story interesting and showcase the author’s impressive and instinctive understanding of human experience. The writing is strong enough to outpace the imperfect plot, effectively drawing the reader into its unique perspective until the world of The Rain Artist feels dangerously close to our own.
Verdict: 7.7/10
Strengths
Brilliant trio of well-written protagonists, each
Vibrant, fecund worldbuilding
Distinctive and memorable writing style, both mature and affecting
Weaknesses
Uneven pacing makes some key plot points feel rushed or incomplete
Villains’ motivations feel a bit thin
Some plot points are better left unscrutinized
The Rain Artist will be published on February 24th. You can pre-order a copy from Moonstruck Books, on Amazon, or through a bookstore in your community.
You may also like: Under the Skin, Brave New World, Parable of the Sower, The Road, Earth Abides
