This will likely enter the list of my all-time favorite books. I found myself saying "glorious" several times and then stopping to thank my parents for instilling in me their love of reading. That brought me so belatedly to this treasure of a book. When the protagonist is tasked to restore a 500-year-old painting which have been white-washed over a hundred years after it was painted, he leaves behind a shattered life in London. He survived WWI but his wife left him for another man. He had little else to lose when he left for the northern village where the church is located. While cleaning up the painting, he intensely experiences the joy and sorrows of the original artist, as though they were communicating across the centuries, even discovering how the unknown master died so many centuries ago.

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

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 painte 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. [129]…more A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr – eBook Details In memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.” At the end of his year in the USA Carr continued his journey westward and found himself travelling through the Middle East and the Mediterranean as the Second World War loomed. He arrived in France in September 1939 and reached England, where he volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force. He was trained as an RAF photographer and stationed in West Africa, later serving in Britain as an intelligence officer, an experience he translated into fiction with A Season in Sinji. It transpires that an archaeologist, Moon, has also been commissioned by the same bequest to find the grave of an excommunicated ancestor who was said to be buried outside the church yard, and their discoveries eventually converge in a surprising way. Another subplot involves Birkin's mostly suppressed feelings for the vicar's wife. To feel pain means to be alive and the resolution to pursue happiness is a courageous vow that Thomas is willing to take.Cloth and Pictorial Boards. Condition: Fine. Illustrated by Ian Stephens (illustrator). (121pp). Slipcase partly sunned, else as new Size: Slim Royal Octavo. Hardcover. In particular, he forms a close friendship with archaeologist James Moon, another war veteran, who like Birkin has been emotionally scarred. Moon is employed in the village under the same bequest, working to uncover a mysterious lost grave, but is more interested in discovering the remains of an earlier Saxon church building in the field next to the churchyard.

A literary holiday – JL Carr’s A Month in the Country A literary holiday – JL Carr’s A Month in the Country

The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. He and Moon are a very different pair (not a couple): both are ex-army, spending the summer funded by a bequest from Miss Hebron (in Moon’s case, he has to find the missing grave of an ancestor). But Moon lives in a hole, while Birkin lives up a ladder in That’s the phrase the war veteran thinks of when he arrives in the small, poor Yorkshire village that is “starveling country”! The film was originally intended for television, but its producer Kenith Trodd upgraded his original plan to a cinema feature. [6] The original working title for the film was "Falling Man". Playwright Simon Gray was commissioned to write the screenplay, and Pat O'Connor chosen to direct. In contrast to the book, which is narrated as a recollection by Birkin as an old man, the film is set entirely in the 1920s, except for a brief moment towards the end. In initial drafts of the screenplay, Gray had included a narrator, but O'Connor felt this was not the correct way to present the story: A haunting novel about art and its power to heal, J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.My Review: A few, a precious few only, moments in life are trapped in the diamond facets of unforgettability. The moments that, in the movie we're all directing inside our heads at any given moment, define our character. In all senses of that word. Be they happy, sad, public, private, we all have them; very very few of us talk much about them; and almost no one makes art from them.