Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe

1 review

drlark's review

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

I picked this up for a reading challenge/scavenger hunt only knowing that this author tends to write political fiction, and his more well known stuff is about boys coming of age. I like the former, want no part of the latter. But The Rain Before It Falls is a historical novel about four generations of women over a century in England, told primarily by a grumpy/sad lesbian, Rosamund, who has just died but who starts her story being evacuated to her cousin's farm during the London Blitz in WWII. And this, it happens, is right up my alley. 

Rosamund's niece is the executor of her estate, so she discovers this story in the form of audio recordings and photographs. I've said before that I don't super enjoy stories narrated in retrospect, and this was certainly that. Rosamund goes through a series of 20 photographs and narrates her memories of them. On the face of it, this does not seem like it would be my cup of tea, but I enjoyed Rosamund SO MUCH, her perspective, her humor, her heartache, that the story just bops right along, despite the lengthy narration and infrequent dialogue. A solid, if very sad, read about cycles of abuse and the enduring thread of love that still manages to bind generations and families together.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Emotional abuse