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Describe your latest work. When I started working on Plant-Thinking in 2008, I had no idea that the project would turn out to be as broad as it did.... Continue »

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Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life
Michael MarderMichael Marder 9780231161251

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A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics)

by J L Carr

ISBN13: 9780940322479
ISBN10: 0940322471
Condition: Standard
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Staff Pick

Oh my God — this is just amazingly beautiful: so perfect, so exquisite! A wounded war vet accepts a commission to restore a long-forgotten mural on a church wall in a tiny English village. The nuance and small moments that make up this gorgeous little novella are breathtaking, and the quiet, spare story will completely invade you. Brilliant!
Recommended by Dianah, Powell's City of Books

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

About the Author

James Lloyd Carr (1912-1994) worked as head teacher, novelist, and publisher. His books include A Season in Sinji, The Harpole Report, What Hetty Did, A Month in the Country and The Battle of Pollock’s Crossing. The last two books were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and A Month in the Country won the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Michael Holroyd was born in London and educated at Eton College. He has written biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, and a four-volume biography of George Bernard Shaw.

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:

: Tim Gilllespie, January 19, 2012 (view all comments by Tim Gilllespie)
Almost nothing seems to happen in this 1980 British novel about a World War I vet who comes to a rural English village to restore a medieval mural on the wall of the parish church. But slowly the protagonist and the reader are caught up in the slow uncovering of the ancient painting and the quiet, healing rhythms of the place.
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: Rachel Coen, August 27, 2009 (view all comments by Rachel Coen)
Quite possibly the most perfect novel I have ever read. I'm almost without the words to explain it -- it's the story of a man recovering from WWI as he spends a slow, meditative month in the English countryside restoring a medieval fresco in a church, but the writing is so elegant and light that the subject almost doesn't matter... except that in the end it does, as it offers a glimpse of how art can help make someone whole again. As the narrator says, at the end, viewing the masterpiece he has uncovered -- "And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart -- knowing a precious moment gone and we not there." This book creates just such a precious moment. Read it.

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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780940322479
Introduction:: Holroyd, Michael
Author:: Holroyd, Michael
Introduction by:: Holroyd, Michael
Introduction:: Holroyd, Michael
Author:: Carr, J. L.
Author:: Various
Author:: Holroyd, Michael
Publisher:: New York Review of Books
Location:: New York
Subject:: Historical
Subject:: Historical - General
Subject:: Historical fiction
Subject:: Villages
Subject:: Psychological fiction
Subject:: World War, 1914-1918
Subject:: Mural painting and decoration, Medieval
Subject:: North Riding of Yorkshire
Subject:: Art restorers
Subject:: General Fiction
Subject:: Literary
Subject:: Literature-A to Z
Edition Description:: Trade paper
Series:: New York Review Books Classics
Series Volume:: 034
Publication Date:: 20001031
Binding:: TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:: General/trade
Language:: English
Pages:: 160
Dimensions:: 8.03x5.01x.44 in. .37 lbs.

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