OUR BOOK OF THE WEEK...

The Rain Before It Falls
by Jonathan Coe (Knopf)

Jonathan Coe's newest novel relates the story of four generations of women of the same family spanning World War II until the present. Much of the story is told through a series of cassette recordings left behind by the recently deceased Aunt Rosamond. Ros leaves the tapes for her cousin Beatrix's granddaughter Imogen. The book is a revealing portrait of the inextricable link between family members over a sixty-year period and the ways in which patterns repeat themselves through the generations. Coe is among the best of contemporary writers. -G. Berry