The Rain Heron, Robbie Arnott
The Rain Heron, Robbie Arnott
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The Rain Heron
A Novel

Author: Robbie Arnott

Narrator: Jessica Douglas-Henry, Zoe Carides

Unabridged: 7 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/09/2021


Synopsis

A gripping novel of myth, environment, adventure, and an unlikely friendship, from an award-winning Australian author.

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup d'état. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting, farming, trading, and forgetting the contours of what was once a normal life. But her quiet stability is disrupted when an army unit, led by a young female soldier, comes to the mountains on government orders in search of a legendary creature called the rain heron—a mythical, dangerous, form-shifting bird with the ability to change the weather. Ren insists that the bird is simply a story, yet the soldier will not be deterred, forcing them both into a gruelling quest.

Spellbinding and immersive, Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron is an astounding, mythical exploration of human resilience, female friendship, and humankind’s precarious relationship to nature. As Ren and the soldier hunt for the heron, a bond between them forms, and the painful details of Ren’s former life emerge—a life punctuated by loss, trauma, and a second, equally magical and dangerous creature. Slowly, Ren's and the soldier’s lives entwine, unravel, and ultimately erupt in a masterfully crafted ending in which both women are forced to confront their biggest fears—and regrets.

Robbie Arnott, one of Australia’s most acclaimed young novelists, sews magic into reality with a steady, confident hand. Bubbling with rare imagination and ambition, The Rain Heron is an emotionally charged and dazzling novel, one that asks timely yet eternal questions about environment, friendship, nationality, and the myths that bind us.

A Macmillan Audio production from FSG Originals

About Robbie Arnott

Robbie Arnott is the author of the novel Flames, which won the Margaret Scott Prize, was short-listed for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, and was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 2019, he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. He lives in Tasmania.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit

The Rain Heron has a miraculous aura of a cruel fairy tale. This mythical heron is a bird of supernatural abilities made of raindrops, mist and a cyan of the sky… This water-risen heron was unlike any other they’d seen before – any other heron, any other living creature. Its blue-grey feathers were so......more

Goodreads review by Lark

There is something wonderful and sincere and yet elusive about this novel for me. There were aspects about the author's style and storytelling that made it difficult for me, the first time I read it, to immerse myself in the story. After a couple of re-reads, though, my mind has become accustomed to......more