Some Rain Must Fall Read online

  ‘… a bulging, jostling, glistening, eerie, babbling explosion of a book.’ The Scotsman

  ‘Michel Faber has produced a fine first volume … these are well-crafted pieces of quiet and forlorn intensity in a very real world.’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘[Faber has] an unjudgmental curiosity that nevertheless shapes his stories into moral tales, highly coloured parables whose range of unusual settings prod the senses, and feed them … a gem of inventiveness, a genre-defying, often startling debut.’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Above all Faber has the kind of wide ambition more usually found in his American counterparts.’ Literary Review

  ‘[Michel Faber has] a seemingly infinite imagination … a mesmerisingly inventive writer.’ The Crack

  ‘Scotland has a new force in literature. One which, with the publication of his first book of short stories, will reveal an author with a sackful of ideas and the skill to create characters strong enough to carry those ideas through.’ The List

  ‘He’s nae feart. God, the universe, love, sanitary towels – there’s nothing he won’t tackle. You can sense him out there wondering about the stars and not being too embarrassed to tell you.’ The Scotsman

  ‘Judging by his debut collection, he’s shaping up to be the Edwin Morgan of short fiction. Some Rain Must Fall has an astonishing variety of themes, characters and styles, from delicate psychological probing, to nightmare science fiction, to grotesque, hilarious fable.’ Duncan McLean

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 1998

  by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

  This digital edition first published in 2008

  by Canongate Books Ltd

  Copyright © Michel Faber, 1998

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  The author wishes to thank the Scottish Arts Council for a writing bursary, which has kept a variety of wolves from the door while he has written these and other stories

  Earlier versions of these stories have appeared in various publications: ‘Fish’ (Scotland on Sunday, 1996), ‘The Red CementTruck’ (The Printer’s Devil, 1997), ‘Half a Million Pounds and a Miracle (Chapman, 1998), ‘Some Rain Must Fall’ (Pulse Fiction: TheWinners of Ian St James Awards, 1998). ‘Fish’ was broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland in 1996

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 406 7

  www.meetatthegate.com