The Rain Before It Falls
by: Jonathan Coe
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
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Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart
I picked up Jonathan Coe’s eighth novel, The Rain Before It Falls, because I was intrigued by the title. I had never heard of the London-based author before. Now I can’t wait to get my hands on his other works.
The Rain Before It Falls opens with the death of Gill’s Aunt Rosamond. Seems kind of morbid at first, especially when her doctor finds her in her chair with a record player going and a tape machine nearby. Niece Gill’s instructions are to find Imogen and give the four tapes to her. If Gill cannot locate the child, who must be about 30 years old by now, she can listen to the tapes.
Gill vaguely recalls Imogen, a blind child of seven or eight at Aunt Rosamond’s fiftieth birthday party. She has no idea of the girl/woman’s last name nor where she might be living. With the help of her two daughters and Rosamond’s solicitor, Gill tries to locate Imogen. The search is summarized quickly in the first twenty pages, leaving readers to wonder what track the novel could take. Between pages twenty-one and twenty-seven, readers get a quick overview of Gill’s relationship with her aunt, her husband, and her daughters. Then on page twenty-eight the real story begins. Gill and her daughters decide to listen to the tapes in hope of locating Imogen.
Rosamond has carefully chosen twenty photographs that will explain Imogen’s life. As the child is blind, Rosamond describes the people, places, and things in each of the photographs, all the while giving Imogen her family history. The format reminded me of both Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why.
By the fourth picture and accompanying lengthy description, I was beginning to get a little bored. The fifth picture picked up the storyline (for me) and from there until the end of the novel, I was hooked. In the rest of the novel, there are some verifications of subjects/events/happenings that have been skillfully foreshadowed. And as the novel draws closer and closer to its climax, there are some major bombshells and twists that left me gasping out loud (something I haven’t experienced since Jonathan Hull’s Losing Julia).
Simply put, ya gotta read this book!
Armchair Interviews agrees.
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