The Rain Before It Falls

by Jonathan Coe

'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. Called "the best English novelist of his generation" by Nick Hornby, Jonathan Coe extends his range in this magnificent account of a Shropshire family in the last half of the twentieth century.

(From Publisher).

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. His novels include The Rotters' Club, The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death and What a Carve Up!, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. His latest novel is The Rain Before it Falls (Penguin, 2007).
The House of Sleep won the Writers' Guild Best Fiction Award for 1997.

The book is the magnificent account of a family in Shropshire told by the dying protagonist.

Important for the development of one child's personality are love and acceptance from his mother. Children who grow up without receiving love are not able to give love to their own children.

Generally the author is a satirical writer and he surprises writing a history about three generations of women affected by the post-war London events. Interesting way of captivating the reader until the very end of the novel.