But when the soldiers find her and become threatening, she’s left with no option other than to show them where it roosts. She was introduced to it by her mother as a young girl. The trio is careful to avoid contact with other humans, especially the soldiers that have recently infiltrated the area and who are on a mission to find and capture the sole rain heron that they believe lives in the vicinity. She barters with a man and his young son living nearby, with whom she exchanges items - fleece gloves, vitamins, boots, vegetable seeds - that she cannot get elsewhere. She’s self-sufficient, eating berries and other plants, hunting deer for meat and occasionally trapping a fish for her supper. In Part 1 we meet Ren, an older woman who is living in a cave on a mountainside in the forest. In a world beset by drought, it’s a much sought-after creature, offering abundance and helping boost harvests, but it also comes with risks: the bird is also associated with frosts, floods, destruction - and sometimes death. It has blue-grey feathers that are so pale you can see straight through them, and whenever it flaps its wings a thick spray of water falls from them, almost as if it generates its own rain. In this masterfully created tale, which is split into four parts, we are introduced to the rain heron, a mythical bird that brings rain wherever it goes. Perhaps it could best be described as an “eco fable”? Regardless, it’s a wonderfully evocative and compelling tale about humankind’s obsession with exploiting nature to make money - seemingly at any cost. It defies convention because it’s a seamless blend of literary fiction, myth, fairytale and dystopia. Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron is quite unlike anything I’ve read before. Fiction – Kindle edition Atlantic Books 288 pages 2020.

The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott