Jonathan Coe impresses us with his book The Rain Before It Falls; read with us in this article and we will show you all the details of this great story.
The rain before falling
Its author, Jonathan Coen, was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire on August 9, 1961. He studied at Cambridge and Warwick Universities. An English novelist and writer, he began to stand out at the end of the 20th century with novels that are also political satires about 1980s England (the so-called Grey Years), such as What a Carve Up!
Her first novel was published in 1987. Closer to the present, The Rain Before It Falls , from 2007, has a different, introspective, and intimate tone, which has been highly praised. In its analysis, the work invites us to reflect on the importance of rain as an element in our lives and its symbolism in narrative.
Analysis
A middle-aged woman with two daughters received the sad news that her aunt Rosamond had just passed away. Her family doctor entered the house and saw the old woman's lifeless body in her chair. He had a microphone and some recorded tapes on a small table. Had she left a message? The day after her funeral, Gil found an empty pill bottle inside Rosamond's house.
At the same time, she discovers a note detailing that Rosamond has left behind recorded tapes in which she comments on twenty photos from her life, and that these tapes are to be delivered to Imogen, a supposed blind niece of Rosamond's. Thanks to these spoken descriptions, she will be able to learn the true story of Rosamond and her family, which her current relatives have kept hidden. This aspect is reminiscent of stories about the significance of rainwater in memory and family history.
Summary
They refused to perform heart surgery on her, a condition she suffered from. She lived alone in a small house in Oxfordshire, visited only by her doctor, who came almost daily. Rosamond was seventy-three years old, and one day her doctor found her in her chair as stiff and cold as a pan of ice.
After the burial, the will. Rosamond never married or had children; the friend—or lover—who lived with her for many years has already died, and her estate must be divided equally among three heirs: two-thirds for Gill and David, her sister's children, and the other for Imogen, an unknown woman.
A seven-year-old blonde girl with a visual impairment, strange and charming, who captured the attention of all the guests that day. For Gil, she is almost unknown; almost twenty years have passed since that event.
But when Gill goes to the dead woman's house, he finds another legacy: several cassette tapes that Rosamond recorded before she died—or committed suicide—and a note telling Gill that the tapes are for Imogen, and if he can't find her, that she should listen to them. This search for family history is similar to what can be discovered about the phenomenon of rain and its effects on the environment.
Twenty photographs arranged like a paranormal puzzle, one of the recordings features Rosamond's voice, a recording addressed to the blind woman. Gill and her daughters spent months trying to locate the elusive blind girl without success.
It tells a story of mothers and daughters that spans from the forties to the present, three generations of women linked by desire, guilt, cruelty, and the ambivalence of their affections… A story that resonates with the idea of how happiness and human relationships are intertwined.
Imogen is blind. Hence the tapes instead of letters, hence the precise way Rosamond describes them. To tell Imogen the story of her life, Rosamond chooses 20 photographs of key moments in her life, which underscores the importance of memories in any narrative.
The descriptions are so precise you can almost see the photos in your mind. The landscape, whether the sky was cloudy or not, the colors of the scene, the gestures, the position of the people in the photo. We invite you to read the article about The House of Sorrows , as it's also a great story.
A small excerpt from the book
Do not lose sight and watch the clouds, there will be a storm, and if they come this way». Thea heard the comment (always, I noticed the mood swings right away, it never ceased to amaze me how sensitive she was, how attentive she was to adults' emotions), and that led her to investigate and ask, "Is that why you're sad?" ?» "Sad?" Rebecca asked, turning around. Me? No. I'm not interested in rain in summer. I even like it.
"It's my favorite rain." "Your favorite rain?" Thea said. I remember her frowning, trying these phrases out, and then she exclaimed, "Well, mine's the rain before it falls." Rebecca laughed at that, but I said (presumably, I suppose), "But honey, before it falls, isn't it really rain?" And Thea said, "Then what is it?" And I explained, "Well, it's just water. Moisture in the clouds."
Thea looked down and summoned herself once more to pick out the pebbles on the beach; she caught two and began to beat them against each other. She judged that she liked the noise and the excitement of it. I continued: «Do you understand then that there is no rain before it falls? It has to fall for it to be rain." It was simple to expose this to a little girl; she almost regretted having started.
But Thea apparently had no problem grasping the idea; quite the opposite, because after a while she stared at me and shook her head ruefully, as if without battling such things with an idiot, she was constantly testing her patience. "I know it doesn't exist," she said.
"That's why it's my favourite. Because something doesn't have to be real to make you happy, right? She then ran into the water smiling brightly, glad she got away with it thanks to her own logic.
Finally, the theme of rain and its symbolism can be explored in depth in various contexts. For example, in the animals that announce rain and how these phenomena can influence people's daily lives and their environment.
In addition, Coe's book also invites us to reflect on life's moments that can be as fleeting as a meteor shower , reminding us that every experience can be unique and unrepeatable.
In short, The Rain Before It Falls is a book that not only explores family relationships and secrets of the past, but also reminds us of the importance of moments, rain, and the meaning of our own personal history.
