Wheels within wheels

Jonathan Coe relays a dying woman's story through a third party to unveil human truths

Understated plot rather than humor is the driving force behind Jonathan's Coe's new novel.

By Matthew Peters

March 23, 2008

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The Rain Before It Falls By Jonathan Coe Knopf, 240 pp., $23.95 In Jonathan Coe's "The Closed Circle" (2004) a character asks, ambitiously, "Does narrative serve any function?" His short new novel offers one answer: It serves the function of being necessary to human life. Coe himself might shrink from such an encompassing explanation. At one moment in "The Rain ... (Full article: 903 words)