Family's sad legacy draws in readers

THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS. By Jonathan Coe. Knopf. 240 pages. $23.95.

A good story closes with the sound of a box clicking shut. Jonathan Coe carves a lovely box with restraint and rhythm.

"The Rain Before it Falls" begins softly with the news of an old English spinster's death. Her niece, Gill, who lives a quiet life in Shropshire, is left to take care of Rosamund's modest estate. Gill finds a series of audio tapes bequeathed to a distant relative named Imogen.

For most of the novel, readers listen to those tapes and hear Rosamund's voice, warm with tenderness and candor, which Coe clearly channeled. The story pulls readers gently at first, then as resonance builds in the hitherto unspoken family history, the pace quickens. Coe understands how families can perpetuate mistakes and incubate them into burdens so overwhelming that those closest must look away. But Rosamund cannot take her eyes off her family's course.

She tells her secret history, which explains Imogen's life and blindness, by describing a series of 20 family photographs. The novel is complete, and the end comes with the perfect control of an author at his peak.

Gill tries to hold on to the sad legacy, just as Rosamund had. But she cannot force the past in front of the present.

"What she had been hoping for was a figment, a dream, an impossible thing: like the rain before it falls."

Click.