A Month in the Country

by J.L. Carr

Book Overview

A short, spellbinding novel about a WWI veteran finding a way to re-enter--and fully embrace--normal life while spending the summer in an idyllic English village. 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0940322471
• ISBN13: 9780940322479
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Tender, nostaligic, haunting

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.

enchanting

This is one of those works of art that falls into a category of its own. Carr's writing is impeccable and it took on a magical quality where the past and future were perfectly brought together through the voice of the protagonist Tom Birkin. I'm on my fourth reading of it.

Realistic, low-key, authentic, moving

This is a gem - a quiet and realistic recounting of a summer spent uncovering a mural and a life. This is a novel in which nothing extraordinary happens, but full lifes interact moving people closer (or father) from themselves, friendships, loves and human understanding.The narrator is a disfigured veteran of World War I. His wife has left him; his employer retired making this his first job as a self-employed professional. His life is contrasted with that of another veteran hired to find an ancient grave. The friendship of the veterans is the first step in reconnecting to the world. Along the way, a vicar and his wife, the family of the stationmaster, an organist, a dying girl all make their way into and effect the narrator's life.The author's writing style fits perfectly with the story, creating a literary gem worthy of your attention.

Lovely story about the healing process of a war survivor

A month in the country, the movie which starred Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh was shown in 1987, but as usual, the book is better than the movie.Lovely and beautiful in its simplicity, the tale of two great war survivors healing their battle-scarred minds in the village of Oxgodby is one of my favourite novel. Watching the tape recently, I was strucked by the difference between the Birkin in the movie and that of the book. The Birkin in the movie is one-dimensional and the people around him, save Alice Keach is unpleasant. To exorcise this image of the Birkin of the movie, I re-read the book again and was immensely pleased at the Birkin of the novel, alive and likeable but certainly not flawless. The Alice Keach of the world would definitely falls head over heel for him. The beauty of the novel is further enhanced by the portrayal of the healing process in Birkin's nightmarish experiences as a war veteran. He and Moon are not your typical citizens from a nation of victims, where crisis counsellors would intervene and encourage those ceaseless and endless whinings whenever fate deal them a bad hand, instead they resolved the inner demons through themselves, in their own unique way.

A short but wonderful novel

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...