Nothing Drops in 'Before It Falls'

Communication, in its abstract form,

presents literature with problems as numerous

as they are complex. The movement

of information from one locus to

another often results in distortion, some

small yet fundamental change that alters

it irrevocably. The art of fiction deals intimately

with the problems of communication,

and the construction of continually

evolving narrative devices serves

the direct purpose of bridging the aesthetic

distance between the author of a

work and its reader. Still, there are those

authors who would rather confront this

problem, explore it, and overcome it in

an original way, than simply set it aside,

bypass it, and ignore it.

In this respect, English author Jonathan

Coe deserves credit. The approach

Coe takes to his latest novel, “The Rain

Before It Falls,” is relatively unique.

Though none of the ideas that he applies

to his narrative are, in themselves,

original, combining them all is a task fit

for a master. Coe practically entombs the

main thread of the novel—the story of a

young blind girl’s origins—in layers of

nostalgic meditation, the spun-out oral

recollections of the girl’s now-dead great

aunt. Using 20 different photographs as

narrative catalysts, the dead woman recounts

her life story. The dearly departed

passes all this information on to her

niece and the niece’s daughters by way

of audio recordings.

The potential complications are

endless and—for those salivating for

a centrifugal kaleidoscope of vivid,

half-dreamed characters and vistas a la

Pynchon, or unreliable narrative mindgames

and obscured truths in the style

of Nabokov—endlessly appealing. Unfortunately,

Coe is anything but a master,

and “The Rain Before It Falls” is the

type of literary nonentity that its title

unknowingly implies: equal helpings of

moisture and hot air.

The problems begin with the premise.

The focus of the novel is on these 20

photographs, organized chronologically,

explained one by one in order to widen

the readers’ conception of the blind girl,

the niece, and the history of this family.

This is precisely what it sounds like;

for 20 of the 25

chapters of the

story, great aunt

Rosamund speaks

to a tape recorder

about photographs.

20 chapters

of unadulterated,

s e l f - i n d u l g e n t ,

contrived, melodramatic

monologue

may seem

daunting. It is. The

only semblance of

shelter from this

squall of tearful regret

and feminine

angst is a flimsilyconnected,

poorlydeveloped

insight

into the life of Rosamund’s

grandniece,

Gill, and the bizarrely voyeuristic

bonding sessions she and her daughters

partake in, listening to the parallel collapses

of Rosamund’s emotional constitution

and their family’s legacy.

The sheer boredom of the monologue

compounds with each new photograph;

the tale of this young blind

girl’s life is only vaguely connected to

Rosamund’s, but, as Coe seems to have

decided, it’s impossible for the elderly

to make intelligent comments or pass

information forward without digressing

into pointless and totally narcissistic

stories about relatives who ignored

them or lovers who spurned them. Rosamund

carries on in stilted, overly formal

speech that in no way sounds like a

voice that can be recorded. Descriptions

are safe and dull; Coe squanders an opportunity

to use Rosamund’s perspective

to change ordinary perceptions of

places and times in the novel, either to

make them more beautiful and ideal or

more gruesome and haunting. His character

simply doesn’t have the imagination.

Because the narrative

is so heavily

bogged down

in photographs,

Coe seems to resist

the pictures’

resonant historical

context, maintaining

a weird sort of

temporal stasis. It

soon becomes clear

that this crutch of

photographs is really

as ineffective

for Coe as it is for

us. Rosamund admits

that one of the

photographs she’s

describing doesn’t

even accurately depict

the mood she

recalls—and this is the sort of problem

that Coe seeks out but can’t resolve.

What about photography is dependable

when the memories they conjure

are so different? More importantly, why

bother with the photographs that are

basically useless (and agonizingly uninteresting)

when Rosamund’s memories

are so vivid?

In the end, Coe seems to unwittingly

turn on his own characters. At first, Coe

intends for these women’s stories to be

sympathetic. In Rosamund’s words, each

one of them seems worthy of redemption;

they contrast profoundly with the

idle, vilified, or barely existent male

characters. And yet Coe gives a bizarre

natural license to his female characters

as they commit atrocious acts of more

horror than all the male negligence in

the story could possibly amount to. In

the hands of a superior author, this discrepancy

would seem more intentional

and unfold in a clever, unassuming way.

Instead, the surfeit of tragedy becomes

almost ridiculous. His novel seems to

point to an ultimately unsympathetic

universe when it should point to characters

that lack the foresight or free will

to extract themselves from perpetual

misery. This is the problem of communication:

meanings change, alter, and, in

the hands of an unskilled author, can be

lost altogether.

—Staff writer Ryan J. Meehan can be

reached at rmeehan@fas.harvard.edu.