Bestselling author Jonathan Coe explores love, family and secrets in his heartbreaking novel The Rain Before it Falls.

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 Rotters’ Club, The Closed Circle, The Accidental Woman, The Dwarves of Death, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, The House of Sleep (winner of the 1998 Prix Médicis Étranger), A Touch of Love and What a Carve Up! (winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, are all available in Penguin paperback.

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