I loved this book. It is weird--it is so very 1970s, but I really couldn't put it down. The characters and their lives just drew me in. I have a feeling that other readers might not be as taken with Maritta Wolff's Sudden Rain as I was, but I was just drawn into it. Reading it is like stepping back into time--right back into 1972! Did people really say "marvelous" that much? I was around in the 70s, but I was pretty small and probably not terribly cognizant of life around me.
This was Maritta Wolff's last book. She wrote her first one in 1941-ish when she was in her early 20s to critical acclaim. It was followed by several other novels, which were apparently quite popular. But when she wrote this one some thirty years later, and her editors wanted her to make changes (as I understand the story), she said no and put the novel in her refrigerator!! There it remained until she died in 2002.
The book is a slice of American life. You get undertones of the ecology movement, the women's lib movement, politics, social mores of the period. This is when people actually had ashtrays in their houses, and husbands had cocktails after a hard day at the office. She hits upon all sorts of naughtiness in the book--she definitely does not hold back on anything. The ending had a few doozies, but I sort of saw them coming. I rank this up there content-wise with Valley of the Dolls and Peyton Place (though I have not read the latter--this is what I imagine it being like!). I already have her book Whistle Stop on my wish list. Her other novels appear to be out of print, so I will see what I can track down through some used sources. Marvelous!