A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Price: £3.995
£3.995 FREE Shipping

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Carr's early life was shaped by failure. He attended the village school at Carlton Miniott. He failed the scholarship exam, which denied him a grammar school education, and on finishing his school career he also failed to gain admission to t Carr was born in Thirsk Junction, Carlton Miniott, Yorkshire, into a Wesleyan Methodist family. His father Joseph, the eleventh son of a farmer, went to work for the railways, eventually becoming a station master for the North Eastern Railway. Carr was given the same Christian name as his father and the middle name Lloyd, after David Lloyd George, the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer. He adopted the names Jim and James in adulthood. His brother Raymond, who was also a station master, called him Lloyd. In his novella, Carr employs descriptive prose that has me longing for a countryside. Warm summer days are perfect for picnics, budding romances, and staying up late contemplating one's role in life. Carr develops characters in Birkin and Moon who are non believers yet are employed by a church. 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. For a male author, I enjoyed Carr's development of his female characters and was glad that they were simply platonic.

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr | Goodreads

When The Mookse and the Gripes group decided to revisit the 1980 Booker shortlist, this was the book I most looked forward to reading, and it did not disappoint, except that it was over too soon. A Month in the Country sounded pretty romantic and attractive because of its name, frankly. I have always wanted to live in a rural place for as long as I can remember, and that’s why I can say that I automatically love any book set in a rural location. A Month in the Country also became one of my favourite books and once again showed me how the countryside slowly gets under people’s skin.When he realises the full wonder of what he’s revealing, Birkin slows down, like a reader who doesn’t want to finish a brilliant book. He becomes Howard Blake recalls: "I went to a viewing and saw that the film was very profound, with a serious anti-war theme, but a certain amount of 'found' choral music had already been laid in by the editors...I explained that I loved the film and I thought the choral/orchestral music worked brilliantly but it was very big and rich and I felt a score would have to emerge from it and be very pure and expressive and quite small — and that I could only hear this in my head as done by strings only." [13]

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

Denis Gifford (editor) British Film Catalogue: Two Volume Set - The Fiction Film, Volume 2, 1895-1994, p. 960, at Google Books Netflix has yet again let me down. There is a movie from 1987 starring Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth, but Netflix does not have it. At this point it appears I will have to buy it to see it. I can only hope that they do the book justice.The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it’s too late.”

J.L. Carr (Author of A Month in the Country) - Goodreads

I had come to South America to get over someone after an awful breakup, and so I wasn't looking for anything. I wanted zero complications. Right? Sure. As I said to myself on several occasions. So nothing happened that night. Nothing happened the next n J.L. Carr's novella explores such perfect times, through the character of Tom Birkin. 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. Damaged by time served in WWI and a bad marriage, Birkin arrives at Oxgodby fairly shattered and alone. This time serves as a salve on his heart, a reminder of the beauty of art, but also of nature, of simple pastoral idyls and country people. As he uncovers the painting, he is also uncovering the masterpiece of his self, his wonder at the world and whatever lies ahead.Before I’ve wrongly convinced you that this is a somber tale, let me say it’s not at all! Wistful and nostalgic? Yes. Hopeful? Most definitely. Will you be thinking about your own life stories, the chances offered and perhaps passed by? Of course. But it will also reveal to you how those little moments in the past have shaped you into the person you are right now. There are still moments there to grab. You’re not done yet. I would recommend "A Month in the Country" to anyone who has experienced depression, disillusion, loss, pain, uncertainty. It doesn't really matter if you believed in the same god as Mr. Carr (the son of a famous preacher), or in Mr. Freud or in any other modern '-ism' . We are all human, and we have the same needs to give our lives a sense of purpose, a reason to keep trying day after day, no matter how many times we fail. What we are experiencing now, stress in all its fanciful disguises and new medical definitions, is something every generation has gone through since time immemorial. Mr. Carr argues that the past, if you look at its art carefully, can give us precious tools to deal with pain and loneliness and despair. That night, for the first time during many months, I slept like the dead and, next morning, awoke very early.' 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. For art can transform a stilted and stultifying message lost in its dire religion into an edifying inspiration. It opens seeing beyond the dated and emptied forms.

A Month in the Country online - BFI Player Watch A Month in the Country online - BFI Player

I intend to read some novels that are first World War based for this year’s anniversary and this one is the first. It is a novella by a rather eccentric teacher turned writer which absolutely captures a time and place. The plot is straightforward. Tom Birkin is a WW1 veteran who was injured at Passchendaele and is troubled by his memories and dreams and by a failed marriage. It is the summer of 1920 and Birkin has taken a job in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He is to uncover a medieval mural that has been painted over for many years. His living accommodation is the belfry of the Church. Nearby another war veteran, James Moon is digging for a lost grave which may hold some sort of secret because it was placed outside of the churchyard. He also has his scars from the war. 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.

Drama

The happiness depicted in A Month in the Country is wise and wary, aware of its temporality. When he arrives in Oxgodby, Birkin knows very well life is not all ease and intimacy, long summer days with "winter always loitering around the corner." He has experienced emotional cruelty in his failed marriage. As a soldier, he witnessed death: destruction and unending mud. That description reminded me of some of the grisly medieval Romanesque religious art in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, including these I photographed a few years ago: The titular ‘Month in the Country’ acts in the same way a good book can. It transports the novel’s troubled protagonist away from the traumatic outside world, though at times, the pain of the War still intrudes – such as when Birkin sees a photo of a dead fellow soldier and shouts ‘There is no God!’ into the evening air. Nature does not respond. A scene in which the secular Birkin is forced to step in as preacher further dramatises the turn of the century’s crisis of faith and the existentialist anguish prevailing in the face of an apparently meaningless world.



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