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Harper C.: Five Book Friday: Uncanny Graphic Novels (0 comment)
We are in the thick of winter here in the Pacific Northwest, which means it's dark, damp, and chilly. Rather than escaping to stories with warmer, brighter climates, I personally want nothing more than to dive deep into gothic and uncanny fiction as the wind rattles my windows at night...
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A Month In The Country

by J.L. Carr
A Month In The Country

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780940322479
ISBN10: 0940322471
Condition: Like New


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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 H., Powells.com

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.

Review

"The work is virtually perfect, and written with a great deal of liveliness and wit." Michael Wood

Review

"Carr’s prose is spare, elegant and buoyed with wit; the idyllic countryside and its inhabitants are rendered in affectionate detail." Publisher’s Weekly

Review

"A Month in the Country...is one of those perfect, precious novels that you want to loan to friends, buy all your relatives for Christmas and give to your latest paramour." Eve Claxton, Time Out New York

Review

"Carr’s blessedly small tale of lost love is also a small hymn about art and the compensating joy of the artist, both in giving and receiving. It stays with us, too, and is oddly haunting." The New Yorker

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.

 


5 2

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (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
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
10/31/2000
Publisher:
NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
Series info:
New York Review Books Classics
Pages:
135
Height:
.44IN
Width:
5.01IN
Thickness:
.50
Series:
New York Review Books Classics
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2000
Series Volume:
034
UPC Code:
2800940322471
Intro/preface:
Michael Holroyd
Author:
J. L. Carr
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Historical fiction
Subject:
Art restorers
Subject:
North Riding of Yorkshire
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Villages
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
World War, 1914-1918
Subject:
Mural painting and decoration, Medieval

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