Jonathan Coe

the-rain-before-it-falls

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Kate-Atkinson

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Bournville

Mr Wilder and Me

Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2019

Middle England

The Rotters' Club

‘Everything a novel ought to be: courageous, challenging, funny, sad’ The Times

What a Carve Up!

Number 11

The Dwarves of Death

The House of Sleep

A Touch of Love

The Accidental Woman

The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

Expo 58

Loggerheads and Other Stories

Non-fiction, 1990-2013

Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements

A Story of Music

Pentatonic

What A Carve Up!

The Rain Before it Falls

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

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

Entirely compelling . . . the plot will keep you rapt . . . reminiscent of Ian McEwan at his most effective

A 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 aplomb

'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.

The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe's heartbreaking novel of family secrets 
 
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 Accidental Woman, The Rotters' Club (winner of the Everyman Wodehouse prize), The Closed Circle, 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, What a Carve Up! (winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Middle England (Costa Novel Award), Mr Wilder and Me and Bournville are all available in Penguin paperback. 
 
Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence, is available to order now!

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen novels, including What a Carve Up!, The Rotters’ Club, Middle England and, most recently, The Proof of My Innocence. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Européen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. Jonathan Coe lives in London.

The Rain Before it Falls

Format:

Buy the book from:

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

Entirely compelling . . . the plot will keep you rapt . . . reminiscent of Ian McEwan at his most effective

A 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 aplomb

About Jonathan Coe

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter