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A review by spygrl1
The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe
3.0
I love Coe's The House of Sleep -- he's the architect of the most riotously funny footnote gag ever. Rain is not as baroquely weird as Sleep -- In fact, I'd put it in the same category with Penelope Lively and Carol Shields. Through the tapes bequeathed to a mysterious Imogen by his elderly narrator Rosamund, Coe lays bare the complex relationships of several generations of women.
Rosamund has chosen 20 photographs to describe to Imogen in order to explain the tangled history that began during the Blitz. Rosamund describes her girlhood friendship with her cousin Beatrix; Beatrix's disastrous early marriage and neglect of her eldest daughter, Thea; the happy interlude when Rosamund and her lover Rebecca care for young Thea; and Thea's unhappy youth and the tragic way in which she follows in her mother's footsteps.
Rosamund has chosen 20 photographs to describe to Imogen in order to explain the tangled history that began during the Blitz. Rosamund describes her girlhood friendship with her cousin Beatrix; Beatrix's disastrous early marriage and neglect of her eldest daughter, Thea; the happy interlude when Rosamund and her lover Rebecca care for young Thea; and Thea's unhappy youth and the tragic way in which she follows in her mother's footsteps.