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
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.