Some Rain Must Fall & Other Stories [Paperback]

The stories take one of two paths. They generally open up with something weird, a weird first sentence (After fours hours and seventeen minutes there was a raindrop, and Ivan sprang to life) then become normal, or they start out normal (Upstairs, a strange man was going through her things) and end up weird. Not a bad thing, certainly, but it was sort of depressing to know what style the story would take based upon its first sentence, or at the very least, the first paragraph.

The weird stories were enjoyable, but the normal ones were better. Faber has a very down-to-earth grip on reality, the dialogues, internal thoughts and actions of the characters all reflect this. Even when something very strange is going on (fish flying through the air, for example), a mother still has enough sense of order to want to arrange her daughter's clothes properly. At times this works really well in the weird stories, but it generally works phenomenally well in the normal ones. Probably the most normal - a sweet story about a man falling in love with a woman while working at a porno shop - was the best. The second last story, I put it down and said, wow. It wasn't earth-shattering, it didn't want to and won't change the world, but it was very nice and would resonate with most adults.

My main complaint would be the inconsistency. Faber has a flair for description and a broad imagination, surely then he could have written a 'weird' short story book and a 'normal' one, keeping the two flavours distinct? But they were all bunched together and I felt myself jarred out of the reading experience at the sudden and absolute change of tone, pace and style, which is never a good thing.

Overall, I enjoyed it. There were flaws, to be sure, but I never regretted a new page. Not a single story struck me as boring, or superfluous, and apart from the weird/normal inconsistency, the book was a good adventure into Faber's mind. I'm curious to see if he can pull off a larger book (especially considering one of his books is huge), as a lot of the stories didn't have traditional endings at all.

There is a story of a teacher, a specialist who commands three times the normal rate for running a classroom. The start of the story is seemingly harmless, and then it progresses steadily to a horrific experience. Another begins and quickly becomes surreal, however the change is so subtle you might read it more than once to be sure it all is not a metaphor as opposed to a severe form of retribution.

Other stories focus on a narrower field of a person or two, and how presumptions that are made almost unconsciously can have life altering effects. This latter theme may not sound new, however the setting for his story and those that inhabit it are definitely not what would be called a traditional venue.

Mr. Faber is about as far from the traditional as a writer can get, and still be understood. "Under The Skin", pushed the envelope for me to grasp what he had in mind, but it nevertheless was powerful and unsettling. His workings on the fringes of his imagination seem to naturally produce a story of a most interesting Universe. However with at least one tale he seems to condemn another extreme branch of expression without compromise. I agree with what he had one character write, whether the Author agrees, who knows?

Like nothing you have probably read.