The Rain Before it Falls
By Jonathan Coe
Penguin £7.99, 278 pages
FT bookshop price: £6.39

Whilst tying up Aunt Rosamond’s estate, Gill finds a bequest of tapes for Imogen, a blind cousin estranged from her own family whom Gill hasn’t seen for decades. Unable to trace her, Gill plays the tapes, unspooling Rosamund’s detailed descriptions of 20 significant photos that might reveal to Imogen her own obscured heritage.