Review: The Rain Watcher

The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay-Notes & Highlights

This was the other book that I bought from that fancy, nice Walmart. I own the hardcover and decided to borrow the CD audiobook from the library because I’ve never done that before. I was trying to do the self-checkout, but it wouldn’t let me. I had to go to the person and they told me that there was something about last year’s Summer reading book pick up and that made me sad because I can never get my free gently used book from last year. 😔 That’s why this receipt looks different from the last one. I got this book because I loved the book cover and the summary was interesting to me.

The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay Spotify Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3wzxWjbWfvQShfcCrbCaNN?si=33e3476533a94f91

* Checked Out CD Audiobook: Monday, July 26, 2021, 4:43 PM

* Due: Monday, August 16, 2021

26 chapters

21 days

26÷21=1.23809523 (Read 1 or 2 chps./day)

By the way, the audiobook is narrated by Simon Vance, my favorite narrator! He read all of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles! I can’t wait to hear him again! It’s like listening to an old friend again. I haven’t heard him since I was a teenager. I think I’m going to enjoy this experience!!

I finished this book Friday, August 13, 2021 at 8:50 a.m.

I thought this was a heartfelt family drama. It’s really sad that Paul passed while Linden was gone. I wonder why he told Linden to get the box from the tree.

God, I love this book so much that I want to put it in my favorites shelf on Goodreads!

I also thought this was a cozy read for me and I feel like this book would be a great book to read while it’s raining outside. I would like to reread this book again! This would be a reread where I would just enjoy the story and rain again without timing myself because I really just want to go back into this world again, especially because it is Paris!

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* 7/26/21: Disc 1, Track 002, 02:37

I only read 1 chapter today just to get a feel for it and it’s already beautiful! The author even used a David Bowie quote in the beginning! I also wanted to note that I love how the pages look and the section separators are so elegant.

“I tell this story now, once, so that I don’t have to tell it again. I am not good with words, whether they are spoken or penned. When I’m finished, I will hide this. Somewhere where it won’t be found. No one knows. No one will. I’ve never told it. I will write it and not show it. The story will remain on these pages, like a prisoner” (4).

* 7/27/21: Disc 1, Track 004, 10:26

“As the car leaves Charles de Gaulle Airport and edges along the jammed highway and ring road that circles the city, Linden cannot help agreeing with him. The sodden suburbs are dismal, clustered contours of cubic volumes bedecked with garish neon billboards flickering in the drizzle” (5).

“Dude, have you arrived? Tilia always calls him ‘dude,’ and he retaliates with ‘doll.’ Doll, I’m in my room. Number 46. 

Moments later, he hears an authoritative rap at the door and opens up” (12).

lol that’s what Senia does?

“He never hits her, nor Mistral, but his insults are odious daggers of venom” (14).

odious = revolting

“They go on watching; the same topic comes up on each channel: the Seine rising, the unstoppable rain, the growing anxiety.

…

The only noise now is the pitter-patter outside.

…

Linden was able to get his hands on the only Bowie vinyl Paul was missing, Station to Station” (16).

That’s why the author put a Bowie quote in the beginning, because he’s Paul’s favorite.

“When he arrived on that nippy March day in 1997, Linden felt free for the first time in his life. He stood on the balcony of Candice’s sun-filled sixth-floor flat and looked out, elated, his hands gripping the railing. How well he remembers standing there, like a captain at the helm of his boat, Paris enticingly spread out at his feet, the rising roar of the traffic sounding like music to his ears, thrusting bucolic Vénozan and his parents farther and farther away” (19).

bucolic = rural

“The thought sobers them and they do not speak for a while, sitting in the hotel lobby, shoulder-to-shoulder, hushed, while the rain drenches the city” (21).

* 7/28/21: Disc 1, Track 006, 00:00

“When sleep takes over, Linden’s last thought is not for Sacha, nor for Sequana and her ornamental headband, nor for the rain still drumming outside, but for his father, sleeping in the room below, with his mother; his father, whom he loves but whom he cannot talk to. Something always holds him back. Timidity, apprehension, whatever it is, it means they cannot have proper conversations. They never have had. To make matters worse, Paul is the reserved type, apart from his two favorite topics, trees and David Bowie. Linden wonders if Lauren hadn’t carefully crafted this family weekend with hopes of interaction sprouting between father and son. The uneasy feeling perseveres. What if Paul does not want to know more about his son, who he is, whom he loves?” (28).

* 7/29/21: Disc 1, Track 006, 10:39

“We sang ‘À la Claire Fontaine’” (32).

I added this song to my Spotify playlist dedicated to this book.

* 7/30/21: Disc 2, Track 001, 09:11

* 7/31/21: Disc 2, Track 004, 11:06

“Going back to Sévral and Vénozan after nearly three years in Paris was not what he had planned, so he figured that keeping his job and earning money could help as he waited to make up his mind. Three years of cohabiting with Candy, however effortless, made him hanker for a stab of independence” (45).

Hanker = feel a strong desire for or to do something, yearn, long

“Conflict might have made it easier. Yes, there was love. But it was not expressed. Love was tucked away, remote” (47).

“He struggles to put his anxiety aside” (50).

* 8/1/21: Chapter 3, 2:21:22 (Libby Eaudiobook)

I switched to Eaudiobook today because my CD audiobook that I borrowed from the library is starting to scratch and it stops out of nowhere, so I had to. Plus, I had the most brilliant idea! I could listen to my “Real Rain & Thunder Sounds in Foggy Mountain” audio on my Poweramp app while I play the audiobook on Libby. It makes so much sense since the book is called “The Rain Watcher” and it’s constantly raining, although it changed to snowing recently in the story. I was going to use Overdrive to listen to the Eaudiobook, but Libby is way easier. The one thing that I understand now that I didn’t earlier in the story is that Linden is gay. I didn’t get it until he said straight out in a flashback. I thought Linden’s partner, Sacha, was a girl because of the name and he didn’t refer to Sacha as either he or she. I thought that was clever. Now everything makes sense in that regard.

“But he didn’t mind heading back to the sleepy streets where Candice lived, leaving noisy nightlife behind. He always walked home in the small hours, enjoying a peaceful communion with the city” (59).

“Linden paused again, for a long time. His breath drew a puffy white cloud on the cold windowpane. Candice waited. The bubble drifted out ofhim, up and out. He said, ‘You might not like to hear this.’ Another pause. And then he added, ‘I’m gay. Are you disappointed?’ 

He felt fear, wretchedness, loneliness, and then, strangely, relief. He turned around and confronted his aunt. She was smiling and her smile was nothing different from the ones she gave him each day. She got up and came toward him, putting her arms around him. Then she said, ‘I’m not disappointed. I love you just the same.’ 

How he had cherished those words. I’m not disappointed. I love you just the same. They stayed with him during the lengthy span of time when he felt he was not ready to tell anyone else. They stayed with him when he thought about the Sévral years, the abuses, his lonesomeness. They stayed with him when he contemplated telling his father, his mother, his sister. He waited. Candy’s precious words protected him, for the moment, from all the fears he had” (62).

♾♥️

I literally teared up when I first read that passage. It was so heartfelt. I wanted to hug Linden too lol. The way the narrator of the audiobook, Simon Vance, said the line, “Are you disappointed?” was so innocent and small.

“He remembers meeting a woman on a plane once, with whom he had had an interesting conversation, and who had suggested that whenever he felt scared or stressed, all he had to do was to conjure up a positive image, the depiction of a thing, a place, or a person that would appease him” (64).

“When the storms broke and caused the electricity to fail, and after the black clouds had scurried away, leaving pearly mist in their wake, Linden couldn’t wait to head back outside, because the fragrance of the garden was at its strongest. The rain intensified the intoxicating aromas and he’d breathe them in hungrily” (66).

I bet it smells really good! The line of him breathing in the aroma hungrily reminds me of how I breathe in a book.

• The last time I used the CD audiobook I was on Disc 2, Track 005, 07:46. It stopped for no reason. I needed to continue reading, so I had to switch to Eaudiobook.

* 8/2/21: Chapter 3, 3:06:22 (45 minutes)

“The rain has become part and parcel of his life, it seems. What if the skies remain perpetually wet and gray? What if the sun never appears again? Perhaps this is his new world. Rain. Learning to live with its dampness, its pitter-patter” (83).

Parcel = group

Perpetually = constantly

* 8/3/21: Chapter 3, 3:18:31 (12 minutes)

* 8/4/21: Chapter 4, 3:58:12 (40 minutes)

“He had always been a fervent walker. He had strolled through every neighborhood of Paris, and this area used to be one of the most congested and noisiest arteries of the city, clogged by cars and pollution” (101).

“He wishes his father could see the river rising, a chilling yet beautiful sight; Paul would be riveted by the event. He tries to describe the strange new angles of the bridges, the roiling torrent’s hue, the mob gathered along the quays. He depicts the rain, which hasn’t ceased since their arrival; the sensation of rambling through a dusky, humid, aquatic city that bears little resemblance to what it usually is; how Paris has lost its luster, its sharpness, its delineations dwindling into a slippery uncertainty fascinating to behold and to photograph” (109).

Quay = dock

* 8/5/21: Chapter 5, 4:37:22 (40 minutes)

* 8/6/21: Chapter 5, 5:04:55 (27 minutes)

“In this new, fast world where everything happens instantaneously, we aren’t used to waiting anymore. We have forgotten how to be patient” (142-143).

True, Paul!

* 8/7/21: Chapter 5, 5:31:10 (27 minutes)

* 8/8/21: Chapter 5, 5:45:36 (14 minutes)

* 8/9/21: Chapter 6, 6:04:50 (20 minutes)

* 8/10/21: Chapter 6, 6:25:29 (21 minutes)

“Lauren gazed back at the lady and said firmly that her son had not chosen to become homosexual; he was born that way. And she was proud of him, proud of who he was” (184).

I literally teared up and cried as I read this passage. This is so heartfelt.

Update: As I was rereading this line, I wanted to start crying. OMG!

* 8/11/21: Chapter 6, 6:46:48 (21 minutes)

“...his daily existence seemed dreary” (188).

LOL SAME! This is my whole life in one sentence!

“Like rue Saint-Charles, this used to be a busy street, teeming with traffic and passersby. It is now a dreary, watery wasteland without a soul in sight. Up ahead, the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower emerges like a gaunt gray phantom. The black water ripples around them; on its surface, a pallid moon floats like a drowned face staring up in tomblike silence” (191).

“Paris seems deathly, plunged in silence and obscurity. The City of Light has been snuffed out, stripped of its liveliness” (193).

I’ve always wondered if the flood is real in Paris.

* 8/12/21: Chapter 6, 7:08:08 (22 minutes)

I thought it was so sweet that Tatiana decided to make Paul accept Linden and love him. It didn’t make me tear up as much as his scene with his mother.

* 8/13/21: Closing, 8:06:55 (58 minutes)

So I looked it up and the flooding of Paris is real!