A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

J.L. Carr (Author), Michael Holroyd (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 31, 2000 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter's depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Any good reader has, well, had it with novels of healing. The culture of confession has given rise to novels that begin with an unspeakable act (graphically described) and end in redemption (this part is usually more vague). That's not how it works in J.L. Carr's quiet, brief, dreamy A Month in the Country. Writing in 1978, Carr's narrator, Tom Birkin, recalls the summer of 1920. A veteran of the Great War and a cuckold, Tom arrives in Oxgodby to restore a medieval mural in the church. His single season in this town in the north of England passes quickly: he sleeps in the belfry, makes a friend or two, falls secretly in love with the vicar's wife, and, chipping away at plaster and dirt, uncovers a lost masterpiece. These events seem to melt past Tom in the heat of the perfect, fleeting English summer: "The front gardens of cottages were crammed with marjoram and roses, marguerites, sweet William, at night heavy with the scent of stocks. The Vale was heavy with leaves, motionless in the early morning, black caves of shadow in the midday heat, blurring the sound of trains hammering north and south."

Carr devotes many fewer words to Tom's time in the war. The vicar's wife tries to ask him about it. "'What about hell on earth?' she said. I told her I'd seen it and lived there and that, mercifully, they usually left an exit open." His healing consists of not talking about his past--perhaps a revolutionary notion these days. A Month in the Country, with its paean to a lost, good place, oddly recalls Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes. But where that novel was elliptical, Carr's work values clarity and simplicity above all. These are rare enough qualities, but to find them in a novel of romance and healing is a rarer pleasure still. --Claire Dederer

From Library Journal

Protagonist Tom Birkin is a broken man. Haunted by his experiences in the trenches of World War I and recovering from a divorce, Birkin accepts a job restoring a medieval mural of the apocalypse in a church located in a remote corner of Yorkshire. It is here, however, that Birkin, though alone with only an interpretation of the world's end for company, learns to live again. Carr's small gem of a novel was first published in 1980.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 135 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; First Edition edition (October 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940322471
• ISBN-13: 978-0940322479
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #245,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tender, nostaligic, haunting March 25, 2006

By B. H. Stewart

Format:Hardcover

The main theme of this charming novel is how important it is to understand the irretrievable passage of time and to savor the good times that come along. The narrator tells the story of an enchanted summer he spent in Cornwall uncovering an ancient painting in a country church. He looks back upon this time (1920) as one of the most wonderful, important periods of his life. He meets several villagers who make an indelible impression upon him and pleas with us to appreciate our own little "months in the country"--those days when things are going well. Such a good, kind, fully-alive character. I was moist-eyed by the final pages (it's a very short novel) and didn't want it to end. Sweet, powerful, and as lovely as a summer day in the country.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A short but wonderful novel January 8, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

A Month in the Country is unrelated (as far as I can tell) to the Turgenyev piece of the same name. It is, however, a wonderful book, made into a decent movie about 6 years ago, I believe.

It tells the story of Tom Birkin, recently returned from WW I, who goes to the town of Oxgodby to restore a medieval wall-painting in an old church. Over the course of his time there, he gets absorbed into the life of the town, falls in love, learns (and reveals) something about the nature of art, and the healing power of both art and love.

That makes it sound as if the book's some sort of mushy new-age blather, and it's not at all. It's a short and profoundly entertaining novel. I would have loved to have been assigned this in a high-school english class, because (1) Carr's vocabulary is remarkable, and the occasional strange words he uses are worth looking up (e.g., "sneck"), and (2) it has a lot of the sort of structure that one is forced to write about in English classes ("contrast the relationship between Birkin and his work with that between Moon and his...") but which in this book actually contributed something to the story -- there are multiple parallel threads in the book, and their inteweaving makes it richer. I could've written a decent essay about that...

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical, poetic escape May 23, 2005

By Reviewer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

When I was reading this book I often felt as if i was either there or the author was telling the story directly to me. My only objection is that it was too short!