A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Carr made art from a crystalline moment. Cold, glittering art, fire banked in its facets, glinting at the reader from sly angles and unexpected edges. Was this akin to his own character defining moment? I certainly don't know, but I suspect so. It's the best explanation I have for small moments clearly real and recalled in fresh, bright colors and sharp, focused images.

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.I've waited for a week before writing a review because I did not have much to say and, as I am typing, I realize I still don't. You know, it was lovely and melodic. The setting was idyllic, rolling hills, sheep, a nice little church with a hidden painting waiting to be revealed by our main character. The people were all so nice, some had a bit of mystery around them which could have been more explored, in my opinion. A bit of unexpressed illicit love. And way too much religious hymns and conversation. Tom Birkin is a young man from the London area who has served an apprenticeship in the craft (and art) of restoring wall paintings in old churches. He has come to Yorkshire (the “North Riding”, roughly the third of Yorkshire north of York) to the small town of Oxgodby, on his first solo commission, financed via the will of a parishioner: to remove centuries of grime and whitewash from the wall high in the arch of the church. It is believed that a wall-painting lies there, and if so he is to restore it. 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. Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening Link to Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening Or is it a condition we only perceive in retrospection remembering the past through the rose-tinted glasses of memory?

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. He also carried on a single-handed campaign to preserve and restore the parish church of Saint Faith at Newton in the Willows, which had been vandalised and was threatened with redundancy. Carr, who appointed himself its guardian, came into conflict with the vicar of the benefice, and higher church authorities, in his attempts to save the church. The building was saved, but his crusade was also a failure in that redundancy was not averted and the building is now a scientific study centre. 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.There are some sad lines here, about what Tom thinks God looks like in the small town where he's working: “uncompromising. . . no, more—threatening. This is my hand. This is what you did to me. And, for this, many shall suffer the torment, for thus it was for me.” And I'm very annoyed about it. After everything we went through we deserved to have it end in some shared moment of sexiness, instead of petering out the way it did. You worry a lot about situations like that when you're in them, and then later you realize that you were worrying about exactly the wrong aspects of them.

Birkin is not the only outsider. There’s the grumpy vicar, Keach (who resents the disruption caused by the restoration), his very young and beautiful wife, Alice, and finally, Charles Moon. All four are 30 or younger, though Keach in particular seems older. I could never make out what this book wanted to be, when it grew up. It was sometimes boring and disorganized, and also sometimes inspired and filled with big, important “thinks.” I thought, quite mistakenly, that it was a summer-inspired travelogue, in the spirit of a book penned by a Frances Mayes or a Gerald Durrell, but instead it was a book about post-war trauma, dark in tone and unsure of its arc. Also, I believe that many writers who actually WROTE in the 1920s had a more modern voice and a more progressive feel than Mr. Carr did, writing this as a reflective novel, 60 years later. What is the elixir for experiencing the atrocities of war? Happy days in Oxgodby can never be relived,Cloth and Pictorial Boards. Condition: Fine. Illustrated by Ian Stephens (illustrator). (121pp). Slipcase partly sunned, else as new Size: Slim Royal Octavo. Hardcover. He claims his feeling of God is one of unbelief. . . but those are not the words of an unbeliever, they are the words of a man who feels God exists, and hates him. 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 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. The plot concerns Tom Birkin, a World War I veteran employed to uncover a mural in a village church that was thought to exist under coats of whitewash. At the same time another veteran is employed to look for a grave beyond the churchyard walls. Though Birkin is an unbeliever, there is prevalent religious symbolism throughout the book, mainly dealing with judgement. The novel explores themes of England's loss of spirituality after the war, and of happiness, melancholy, and nostalgia as Birkin recalls the summer uncovering the mural, when he healed from his wartime experiences and a broken marriage.

What truly delighted me was sharing Birkin’s excitement as the lime wash was slowly stripped off the wall mural to reveal the masterpiece that had been shrouded in secrecy for some 400 years. Birkin recalled, "And there I was, on that memorable day, knowing I had a masterpiece on my hands but scarcely prepared to admit it, like a greedy child hoards the best chocolates in the box." It was breathtaking. There was something magical too in Birkin’s mystic sweet communion with the unknown artist.He even falls in love — with a woman who reciprocates his feelings but is pretty much unattainable. Their mutual courtship is delicate and quiet. “Seemed ours for ever” We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever — the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. If the author of this book had more appropriately named this Elegy of a Broken Man rather than A Month in the Country, I think my preconceptions and attitudes would have met him in that proper space rather than taken a continuous nose dive into confusion. Simply put, this book has given me all I look for: a cascade of words that ring so true and are beautifully written; wonderfully realised characters even though we know them so briefly; a perfect setting (especially for an Anglophile who loves art and archaeology); and a simple story about complex people. Birkin tells his story as he recalls these memories sixty years later. That month in Oxgodby with its kind people, warm summer days and nights, new friendships, infatuation with the vicar's wife, and a yet unknown masterpiece he is restoring, all contribute to the healing of his psyche. Unlike the people being uncovered in the mural of the apocalypse, sinners falling into hell, Tom is distancing himself from the hell of war.