Book description
The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe's heartbreaking novel
of family secrets
Deeply moving and compelling, The Rain Before it Falls is the
story of three generations of one family riven by tragedy. When
Rosamund, a reluctant bearer of family secrets, dies suddenly, a
mystery is left for her niece Gill to unravel. Some photograph albums
and tapes point towards a blind girl named Imogen whom no one has seen
in twenty years. The search for Imogen and the truth of her
inheritance becomes a shocking story of mothers and daughters and of
how sadness, like a musical refrain, may haunt us down the years.
'Spectacular, heartbreaking, beautifully written. Rosamund's story
is one of the most extraordinary and compelling you will ever read.
Impossible to put down, I loved every minute of it' Sunday Express
'A sad, often very moving story of mothers and daughters' Guardian
'Entirely compelling...the plot will keep you rapt...reminiscent of
Ian McEwan at his most effective' New Statesman
Jonathan Coe's novels are filled with moving, astute observations of
life and love, and are written with a revealing honesty that has
captivated a generation of readers. His other titles, The
Accidental Woman, The Rotters' Club (winner of the
Everyman Wodehouse prize), The Closed Circle, The Dwarves of
Death, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, The House of
Sleep (winner of the 1998 Prix M dicis tranger), A Touch of
Love, and What a Carve Up! (winner of the 1995 John
Llewellyn Rhys Prize), are all available in Penguin paperback.
A male writer who can enter such traditionally female territory and
aquit himself with such aplomb Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in
1961. He has published seven novels, all of which are available in
Penguin:
The Accidental Woman
,
A Touch of Love
,
The Dwarves of Death
,
What a Carve Up!
, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize,
The House of Sleep
, which won the 1998 Prix Medicis Etranger,
The Rotter's Club
, winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize and
The Closed Circle
. He has also published a biography of the novelist B. S. Johnson, which
won the Orwell prize in 2005. He lives in London with his wife and two
children.
