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Shop nowThe Rain Before it Falls
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Learn morePenguin presents the audiobook edition of The Rain Before it Falls written by Jonathan Coe, read by Jenny Agutter.
'What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you.'
Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child.
Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as Bournville, What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen (both for Middle England).
Reviews
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 itA sad, often very moving story of mothers and daughters
A hauntingly melancholy tale of love and loss...a moving exploration of the inheritance of unhappiness, and the devestating consequences it can have for future generations Potent and melancholy, like a short, sad song A male writer who can enter such traditionally female territory and aquit himself with such aplombEntirely compelling . . . the plot will keep you rapt . . . reminiscent of Ian McEwan at his most effective
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