A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
In the summer of 1920 two men, both war survivors meet in the quiet English countryside. One is living in the church, intent upon uncovering and restoring an historical wall painting while the other camps in the next field in search of a lost grave.Out of their meeting comes a deeper communion and a catching up of the old primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.
About the Author
James Lloyd Carr, born 1912, attended the village school at Carlton Miniott in the North Riding and Castleford Secondary School. He died in Northamptonshire in 1994.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
73 of 75 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Birkin, the ageing narrator, reflects on the summer of 1920 when he - a young, shell-shocked and cuckolded survivor of World War One - spent some weeks in the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He is there, ostensibly, to uncover a lost medieval mural in the village church; a painstaking process of recovery. Yet while there, living and working in the church, he discovers treasures of far greater value in the people around him. He is shown anew the gifts of compassion and acceptance, of friendship and respect that he thought the Great War had blown away forever. Spanning one short, hazy English summer Carr has written a short, hazy English novel to treasure. Its ending comes, like that of the season itself, too soon and the reader is deprived of nothing less than the light of a sun. Magical and mournful, this novel's controlled simplicity numbs me each time I read it.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful I have ever read. It is deceptively simple and delightfully slow-paced, full of Lawrence-like depictions of a vanished pastoral landscape. The focal points are a casual and peculiar friendship between two war-scarred, shell-shocked men and just a barely discernible hint of a female love interest. In a book barely 100 pages long, the author not only manages to give us a story that flows like a stream, but also achieves stunning characterisation, bitter indictment of war and a corresponding celebration of peace, a little suspense, and even a twist in the tail. An exemplary study in subtlety.
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have read and re-read this story so many times now that it is hard to know what to write. Suffice to say, this book is an exquisite recreation of a bittersweet summer which you read first as a perfect historical novel, re-read as an analysis of love and art and finally almost breathe in as a cobweb of love, pain, healing and rediscovery. If that makes it sound like new-age hippiedom then I misdescribe it. In its restrained beauty this book somehow captures the essence of what, even in these more jaded days, is unique about England. And I write that as an inhabitant of Wales. It is a wonderful tale.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Compressed delight
A summer pudding is created by using great quality soft fruit which has acidity and sweetness, together with the kind of white bread which is supposed to be crime against the... Read more
Published 4 days ago by Simon Turley
A Quiet Little Shellshock
Tom Birkin, the character narrating the story, is tasked with restoring the medieval wall-painting in the church. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Alex in Leeds
Art lovers delight
A remarkably daring book when you consider it was written in the 1970s. It is like discovering a Michelangelo in the village chapel. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Bookworm
Look your last on all things lovely
This is a masterpiece. You'd have to be the sort of reader who enjoys Dan Brown to think otherwise. It is rich in theme - the Great War, religion, art, sex, love - but is... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Morphybum
After the shellshock... touching story of recovery
Word of mouth got me on to A Month in the Country, and I watched the film about the book starring a youthful-looking Colin Firth (who plays the main character Birkin) and Kenneth... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Tom Doyle
land of lost contenthaunting
Haunting, evocative writing.Difficult to believe that the Booker judges that year rated another novel more highly. Read more
Published 8 months ago by scrittore
A Month in the country
Great book - read it with my book group and we all loved it. The descriptions are fantastic you actually feel the long hot days of summer, and the characters are interesting and... Read more
Published 10 months ago by JJ
Subtle and evocative
Tom Birkin, recovering from horrific experiences in the First World War and deserted by his wife, accepts a commission to restore the mural of a church in the heart of the... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Clive A. H. Still
Poetic writing
This book was given me by a friend and it rather reminds me of my favourite book, The Go-Between by L P Hartley, in that it tells of a "displaced" person spending a hot summer in... Read more
Published 13 months ago by hiljean
A book to return to again and again
I have read a lot of books and intend to read many more, but this book is the one I shall keep revisiting. It is haunting and beautiful. Read more
Published 14 months ago by S. Douglas
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