A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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This edition includes revisions made by the author for an edition first published by the Quince Tree Press in 1991.

A Month in the Country by JL Carr review — a Rereading: A Month in the Country by JL Carr review — a

Most of the action occurs within the belfry where Birkin works and sleeps, even the contrast as he fights an inner impulse to strike up relations with Alice. Set in the summer of 1920, but related in 1978, an older Birkin is remembering the month during which he is hired to uncover a medieval mural in a church in northern England. The moments that, in the movie we're all directing inside our heads at any given moment, define our character. I have no room left to actually review this book, except to say that the situation I'm badly describing is one that novelists don't often try to address, preferring as they do to deal with actual, rather than potential, love affairs.

That’s the phrase the war veteran thinks of when he arrives in the small, poor Yorkshire village that is “starveling country”! Set in 1920, the film follows the experiences of Tom Birkin, who has been employed under a bequest to carry out restoration work on a medieval mural discovered in a church in the small rural community of Oxgodby, Yorkshire.

A Month in the Country by JL Carr – review | Classics | The

Many of the incidents in the novel are based on real events in Carr's own life, and some of the characters are modelled on his family.The setting was idyllic, rolling hills, sheep, a nice little church with a hidden painting waiting to be revealed by our main character. A soldier who has survived the First World War but is traumatised, starts working in a church by uncovering and restoring an historical wall painting. During lockdown, literary escapism no longer has to mean retreating to fantasy worlds or sweeping dramas.

A Month in the Country - J.L. Carr - Google Books A Month in the Country - J.L. Carr - Google Books

At the same time, Charles Moon - a fellow damaged survivor of the war - has been asked to locate the grave of a village ancestor. Photograph Is Added By Selling Site And Not Ours, Therefore May Not Reflect This Edition Or Condition. Above all, there is a marvellous description of the great wall-painting of the Judgement Day which Birkin is employed to uncover. Nothing happened the next night either, or any of the nights that followed as we got involved in the strange life of Quito, and dealt with death threats and psychotic outbreaks and false passports and the other things affecting our circle of friends. Why did she care about why her forebear was not buried in the churchyard, and where he was laid to rest?

But others are answered - surprisingly, but satisfactorily: who the falling man was, why he was covered up almost as soon as the mural was finished, and why the grave Moon finds is not on consecrated ground. The novel received more acclaim in America than in Britain, although it did make the shortlist for the Booker Prize, where it lost out to one of William Golding’s less successful novels. As he uncovers the painting, he is also uncovering the masterpiece of his self, his wonder at the world and whatever lies ahead. L. Carr's Man Booker winning A Month in the Country and was intrigued enough by the title to read it for myself.

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Birkin is now an old man, looking back at his youth – the novel is signed off “September 1978”, after another World War has passed. JL Carr elegantly squeezes great breadth and depth in a mere 102 pages: mystery, love, tragedy, humour, sociological analysis, lost opportunities, friendship, art, and general beauty. On the last night we just sat on our balcony for hours and had a bottle of rum and listened to the sounds coming out of the karaoke bar two doors down. We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever--the ways things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face.Carr creates a vivid, soothing sense of the nature of Oxgodby’s quiet community which ultimately helps Birkin heal. Carr’s masterstroke is to tinge the mural of Thomas’ chronicle with a gossamer of vivid observations that sparkle the old flame of hope, which glows brighter than ever when Alice Keach, the Minister’s wife, pierces through Thomas’ numbness with her curious vitality. Two demons with delicately furred legs clutched him, one snapping his right wrist whilst his mate split him with shears. Ultimately the happiness contained in these pages is ephemeral, the transitory space between one’s foot leaving the ground and meeting it again.