At 16, Sabine Ballantyne is a typical London teen. She’s tight with a few of her mates, she rarely goes anywhere without her iPod, and she has her TV favorites she can’t imagine ever not watching. At 35, her mom, Kate, is perhaps a bit less typical. She has made it a habit of engaging in adulterous affairs throughout her adult life, and she’s burned through several relationships that way, as you might expect. As a result, young Sabine has seen a cavalcade of so-called father figures over the course of her short life. But that kind of lifestyle lacks the glamor Hollywood and other institutions often emphasize, and this book doesn’t varnish any of that. In fact, you can see the friction points and the high-impact conflicts Kate’s decisions have had on Sabine. The relationship between the two women is all but broken. Sabine seems to tolerate her mother at best, expressing actual hate for her much of the time. Kate, on the other hand, tries too hard to be the girl’s friend and confident—creating a kind of parenting style that rarely if ever works.With yet another relationship, this one six years in duration, crumbling as a result of Kate’s latest conquest, Kate feels strongly that Sabine needs to leave London. Ironically enough, she sends the girl to the very place from which she desperately ran when she was not much older than her daughter—the home of her parents in Ireland.Kate’s parents are advanced in years, set in their ways, and hard nuts to crack, to say the least. Sabine feels entirely alien in the place. She is surrounded by horses; she hates horses. She is appalled by the dank moldy old house that seems to be falling apart around her aging grandparents. The rural Irish town is anathema to Sabine, the shallow, youthful city girl. But as is often the case, environments can be the catalyst for change. So it is for Sabine, her rigid grandparents, and ultimately her mother.On a particularly boring and rainy day, the girl wanders into an unused study and finds there boxes of old documents and photos that fascinate and enchant her. The hart of the child is turned to the parent or in this case, the grandparents. Initially, Sabine’s grandmother, Joy, is furious that the girl would open the old boxes. But soon the two are building bridges of understanding as a result of jointly viewing the photos. This author’s talent is such that you, too, get to view vivid vignettes. The book opens, for example, in a flashback to when the grandmother, Joy, is a young girl in what was then the British colony of Hong Kong. It is an historic day in 1953—a day when Princess Elizabeth is to be crowned queen. Joy’s family and scores of other British ex-pats have chosen to use the events in far-off London as an excuse to party and gather round the wireless. It is at this most unwelcome of parties in Joy’s opinion that she meets the man with whom she has a whirlwind romance that leads to marriage.This is a first novel for this highly talented author, and there are a couple of heavily edited herky-jerky parts here and there. But it is a heart-rending story of three generations of women who were initially lost to one another who clumsily and awkwardly at first begin finding their way back to each other and to a new heart home ever so tenuously decorated with new glimmers of understanding and even hope.All three of these women engage in behavior that will cause you to both cheer and grumble in frustration. Their journey to one another and to a kind of reunion is painful, difficult, and sometimes messy, but this is a remarkable story remarkably told. The author came recommended to me by someone I follow here, and her recommendations unfailingly guide me into higher places with more sweeping vistas. This author is no exception. I’ve already started on the author’s second book, Windfallen, and so far, I’m enjoying that as well.
A real love that survived the slings and arrows of fate that soared, like some kind of 1950's Romeo and Juliet, above the petty and mundane. The kind of love you read about in books, that inspired songs, that lifted you like a bird yet stood solid, like a monolith, vast, all-encompassing, enduring. . .Sheltering Rain is deeply moving and yet unnervingly depressing. It makes me feel depressed anyway even if it's not depressing. I love Jojo Moyes but this is not one of her best. Let me clarify things first, I didn't love the book as much as I'd loved her other novels, though I had a great time reading it and to say that I cried when the story ended is overrated. But somewhere deep in my heart I couldn't deny the fact that I feel sad, a trifle breathless with it all when the last sentence had been delivered.As I sifted through the pages I felt nostalgic like I was reading The Ship of Brides again. I was reminded by the sheer force of the sea and its waves, the free-spirited brides aboard in that vessel, sailing in its own language suddenly became vivid and alive in my memory that the whole scene played out in my mind like a black-and-white classic movie.********In 1950's, I believe there was free love and then war. Young and beautiful women were arranged or forced, not so much in protest, to marry a man that could be a soldier or an affluent business tycoon but some women were lucky to have met and married a man that they truly loved and Joy was one of them.Edward and Joy fell in love with each other at first sight (I can sense you cocking a derisive eyebrow here) it was whirlwind romance that nothing and no one could ever stop them from this enormity. They got married eventually and spent their first day as husband and wife by scouring the streets of Cat Market. She turned to Edward, trying to keep the fury from her voice."He's being ridiculous. He's asking for ten times what it's worth just because you're wearing your uniform. Let's move on.""No," he said. "Just tell me how much. I don't care what it costs today. You're my wife. I want to buy you a present. This present."If I had been there I would have freeze-frame that moment when Edward was desperately trying to please his wife. I would hold the still photograph against my chest and sigh a thousand times as I revel the comical scene with a slight smile on my face.********Joy seems perfect for Edward like Bonnie to Clyde and Scarlett 'O' Hara to Rhett Butler. I'm happy when two of my favorite characters from the novel that I'm reading will end up with each other and they will soon be engaged and get married but what happens after that? But then marriage isn't always full of roses and soft whispers of love or some royalty kind of fairy tale we often dream. Marriage has its own dark side, too, and I'm not sure if I'm prepared to embrace it just yet.I wanted to know if things would get better after the emotional upheaval that loomed over them like dark clouds that nearly sent the entire family in the brink of destruction. I wanted to know more.I can still feel the familiar ache just looking at the cover of Sheltering Rain, it's sheer bliss then it isn't. I can never look at it the same way again without feeling lonely. I choose this song, Don't Watch Me Dancing by Little Joy, because it brings me back from the first night they met when Joy who was obviously drunk and shy and Edward who was momentarily nonplussed and amused by her beauty.[image error]
What do You think about Sheltering Rain (2003)?
This novel started with promise, I wanted to know what happened with Joy's and Edward's marriage. It seemed very romantic that they were engaged after meeting just once.However the novel focuses on Sabine, Joy's sulky grand-daughter, whose has been exiled to Ireland by her self-centered mother.You should feel sympathy for Sabine, but I couldn't.I had to force my-self to finish this novel. If this was the first novel I had read by Jojo Moyes it would have been the last. Me Before You has redeemed Jojo Moyes for me.2.5 stars (at the most).
—Mekerei
I was a bit diasppointed.I have read several novels of Jojo Moyes before and got a big fan of her stories. I liked the charakters, the gripping plots and her style of writing, which has always the right balance of descriptive and narrative elements and of severity and humour.Well, her writing was as usual. The story was okay, nothing very exciting, but still not boring, but the characters were very different from those in Moyes' other novels. They did not touch me. Sabine seemed to me as a stupid girl, I even wished she would die in the end. To Joy and Kate I could not really get any bonding to them. I am so glad Jojo Moyes has written further novels and gave great people like Lou, Liv and Jennifer such great stories.For all Moyes fans who want to read her first novel, please do. But all those, who are searching for a good story, absolutely worth reading: better read another of her books!
—Anna Bleibtgeheim
I have become a huge fan of Jojo Moyes work ever since reading her fantastic novel Me Before You and have made it my mission to read her back catalogue. This is why I was particularly excited to read her debut novel Sheltering Rain which was first published in 2002. This is a novel about three generations of women – Joy who spent many of her formative years in Hong Kong in the 1950′s which is also where she met and married her soldier husband Edward. They had perhaps what could be called a whirlwind romance with Edward proposing within days of meeting Joy and marrying her when he next returned to the country. Their marriage appears to be idyllic especially when Joy compares her life to that of her friends, and to be honest I’m not a big believer or fan of what they now call “insta-love,” so I was a teeny bit sceptical of their entire relationship. However, I should not have doubted the author, as years later certain events are uncovered that show the darker side of their marriage, proving that nothing can always be perfect.In the modern day setting, Joy and Edward own a successful horse farm in Kilcarrion, Ireland. They have a daughter Kate who is estranged from them and ran away from Ireland to London at a young age to escape the tensions and problems in the household. Kate also has a daughter called Sabine and history seems to be repeating itself as their relationship as mother/daughter is also quite fraught. Kate does not have the best luck romantically, and Sabine is getting a bit fed up with a succession of relationships that bring a father figure into her life for it to not work out and them being removed from her life. When Joy calls Kate from Ireland to tell her that her father Edward is very ill, Kate jumps at the chance for Sabine to go to the farm and get to know her grandmother and grandfather properly, whilst also giving her a break from Kate’s latest romantic disaster.Sabine hates Ireland. She hates the farm and horses, and finds her iron-willed grandmother Joy very difficult to get to know, understand and get on with. Sabine also finds it very difficult to communicate with her old grandfather, misses all her friends and life in London and is still bitter and exasperated with her mother. Over time however, as we learn about all three generations of women and understand them all a bit better, the fragile relationships between the three appear to be slowly mending themselves. Before that happens there is still a lot of heart-ache to go through for all three, secrets to be unearthed and bridges to be built.One of the things I loved about this book as with many of the authors novels is that you get a perspective from all three lead characters and a switch in time-lines from the past to the present day. This is such an effective tool in getting to know the characters as a reader and provides explanations for things that have happened which make them the person they are in modern times. I think I loved and got irritated by all three women in equal measures due to the consequences of certain actions in their pasts but I think one of the signs of a good story is that the characters should bring out some raw emotion in the reader. By the end of the novel, we have seen a change in Joy, Kate and Sabine for the better due to their experiences, but I also enjoyed that the author did not try and sugar-coat their lives in that it will be a “happy ever after” for them all, and that there would still be challenges ahead.Please see my full review at http://www.bibliobeth.com
—Elizabeth Moffat
