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The Battle of Pollocks Crossing
An English teacher bites off more than he can chew when he ventures to the American Midwest to broaden his horizons In J.L. Carr’s quirky comic novel.
When George Gidner, teacher at Balaclava Road Elementary School, Bradford, has an opportunity to spend a year teaching in America, he can’t believe his luck. But Palisades, South Dakota, is a Depression-struck outpost of mind-numbing awfulness in the middle of nowhere: a place where more than a few American dreams are rapidly becoming nightmares - and one of them is the Battle of Pollocks Crossing.
When George Gidner, teacher at Balaclava Road Elementary School, Bradford, has an opportunity to spend a year teaching in America, he can’t believe his luck. But Palisades, South Dakota, is a Depression-struck outpost of mind-numbing awfulness in the middle of nowhere: a place where more than a few American dreams are rapidly becoming nightmares - and one of them is the Battle of Pollocks Crossing.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
335 people want to read
About the author
J.L. Carr
67 books180 followersCarr 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.
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 teacher training college. Interviewed at Goldsmiths' College, London, he was asked why he wanted to be a teacher. Carr answered: "Because it leaves so much time for other pursuits." He was not accepted. Over forty years later, after his novel The Harpole Report was a critical and popular success, he was invited to give a talk at Goldsmiths'. He replied that the college once had its chance of being addressed by him.
He worked for a year as an unqualified teacher — one of the lowest of the low in English education — at South Milford Primary School, where he became involved in a local amateur football team which was startlingly successful that year. This experience he developed into the novel How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup. He then successfully applied to a teacher training college in Dudley. In 1938 he took a year out from his teaching career to work as an exchange teacher in Huron, South Dakota in the Great Plains. Much of the year was a struggle to survive in what was a strangely different culture to him; his British salary converted into dollars was pitifully inadequate to meet American costs of living. This experience gave rise to his novel The Battle of Pollocks Crossing.
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.
At the end of the War he married Sally (Hilda Gladys Sexton) and returned to teaching. He was appointed headmaster of Highfields Primary School in Kettering, Northamptonshire, a post he filled from 1952 to 1967 in a typically idiosyncratic way which earned the devotion of staff and pupils alike. He returned to Huron, South Dakota, in 1957 to teach again on an exchange visit, when he wrote and published himself a social history of The Old Timers of Beadle County.
In 1967, having written two novels, he retired from teaching to devote himself to writing. He produced and published from his own Quince Tree Press a series of 'small books' designed to fit into a pocket: some of them selections from English poets, others brief monographs about historical events, or works of reference. In order to encourage children to read, each of the "small books" was given two prices, the lower of which applied only to children. As a result, Carr received several letters from adults in deliberately childish writing in an attempt to secure the discount.
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.
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 teacher training college. Interviewed at Goldsmiths' College, London, he was asked why he wanted to be a teacher. Carr answered: "Because it leaves so much time for other pursuits." He was not accepted. Over forty years later, after his novel The Harpole Report was a critical and popular success, he was invited to give a talk at Goldsmiths'. He replied that the college once had its chance of being addressed by him.
He worked for a year as an unqualified teacher — one of the lowest of the low in English education — at South Milford Primary School, where he became involved in a local amateur football team which was startlingly successful that year. This experience he developed into the novel How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup. He then successfully applied to a teacher training college in Dudley. In 1938 he took a year out from his teaching career to work as an exchange teacher in Huron, South Dakota in the Great Plains. Much of the year was a struggle to survive in what was a strangely different culture to him; his British salary converted into dollars was pitifully inadequate to meet American costs of living. This experience gave rise to his novel The Battle of Pollocks Crossing.
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.
At the end of the War he married Sally (Hilda Gladys Sexton) and returned to teaching. He was appointed headmaster of Highfields Primary School in Kettering, Northamptonshire, a post he filled from 1952 to 1967 in a typically idiosyncratic way which earned the devotion of staff and pupils alike. He returned to Huron, South Dakota, in 1957 to teach again on an exchange visit, when he wrote and published himself a social history of The Old Timers of Beadle County.
In 1967, having written two novels, he retired from teaching to devote himself to writing. He produced and published from his own Quince Tree Press a series of 'small books' designed to fit into a pocket: some of them selections from English poets, others brief monographs about historical events, or works of reference. In order to encourage children to read, each of the "small books" was given two prices, the lower of which applied only to children. As a result, Carr received several letters from adults in deliberately childish writing in an attempt to secure the discount.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
February 25, 2019
I have wanted to read more Carr ever since enjoying his masterpiece in miniature A Month in the Country a couple of years ago.
This book does not quite match it - it is a little longer, less focused and more comic in tone.
This one was clearly inspired by Carr's own experiences spending a year as a teacher in South Dakota in the late 30s, but his narrator George Gidner makes a similar trip a few years earlier, at the start of the Great Depression.
We are aware from the start that there was a tragic incident there. In the opening, the aged Gidner is being asked by a young American to be guest of honour at the unveiling of a memorial plaque at Pollocks Crossing. We don't hear more about the incident until the final chapter, but we do see Gidner's suggested wording:
Henry Farewell & James Ardvaak
Hereabouts done to death by their countrymen.
July 5th 1930
R.I.P."
Gidner then recounts the story from the start. As a bored young teacher in Bradford he applies for a job in America, is far too honest in his interview and is almost rejected, but offers to take the post nobody wants in Palisades, a rural backwater on the vast Dakota plains.
The account remains very entertaining as it follows him by boat and train across the Atlantic and across America. He gains something of a rude awakening on arrival, where there is no welcome and it is soon clear that his salary will be inadequate, until he is fortunately befriended by Henry Farewell, an eccentric Anglophile banker who offers him very cheap lodgings on condition that he is willing to talk about 18th century novels and their English arcana.
For much of the book not much happens, apart from slightly exaggerated descriptions of the place, the job and the same sort of "2 countries divided by a common language" comedy that reminded me of The Loved One until the eve of his departure at the end of the year .
Overall, an enjoyable book that still has me wanting to read more Carr, but those who haven't should start with A Month in the Country.
This book does not quite match it - it is a little longer, less focused and more comic in tone.
This one was clearly inspired by Carr's own experiences spending a year as a teacher in South Dakota in the late 30s, but his narrator George Gidner makes a similar trip a few years earlier, at the start of the Great Depression.
We are aware from the start that there was a tragic incident there. In the opening, the aged Gidner is being asked by a young American to be guest of honour at the unveiling of a memorial plaque at Pollocks Crossing. We don't hear more about the incident until the final chapter, but we do see Gidner's suggested wording:
Henry Farewell & James Ardvaak
Hereabouts done to death by their countrymen.
July 5th 1930
R.I.P."
Gidner then recounts the story from the start. As a bored young teacher in Bradford he applies for a job in America, is far too honest in his interview and is almost rejected, but offers to take the post nobody wants in Palisades, a rural backwater on the vast Dakota plains.
The account remains very entertaining as it follows him by boat and train across the Atlantic and across America. He gains something of a rude awakening on arrival, where there is no welcome and it is soon clear that his salary will be inadequate, until he is fortunately befriended by Henry Farewell, an eccentric Anglophile banker who offers him very cheap lodgings on condition that he is willing to talk about 18th century novels and their English arcana.
For much of the book not much happens, apart from slightly exaggerated descriptions of the place, the job and the same sort of "2 countries divided by a common language" comedy that reminded me of The Loved One until the eve of his departure at the end of the year .
Overall, an enjoyable book that still has me wanting to read more Carr, but those who haven't should start with A Month in the Country.
February 25, 2024
This was certainly the weakest of the five Carr novels I've read to date (the first four were 'A Day in Summer' [4th place], 'The Harpole Report' [3rd], 'How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup' [2nd] and 'A Month in the Country' [one of my all-time favourites]). But Carr's writing and the characters he creates are so wonderful that even his lesser works are a joy to spend time with. If you've yet to read his work, I urge you to do so.
July 28, 2011
This was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1985, the year that The Bone People won (see my review of that book for my take on it). I was surprised by how funny this story was. It is about a teacher who signs up to cone to the US from England to teach high school as part of an exchange program. It is the beginning of the Great Depression and he is placed in South Dakota. Tocqueville meets Cold Comfort Farm. It starts out very funny. He gets fired for presenting his take on Custer and the battle of little big horn. It turns from a quirky humorous look at culture clash between England and US farm country to a quite serious look at deeper issues involving foreclosures on family farms and treatment of Native American Indians. Short (less than 200 pages) book that packs a great deal into those pages.
August 20, 2025
3.5. A strange book from the author of A Month in the Country. I tend to like old 20th century books about exiles, particularly when discussing the cultural differences between nationalities. Carr, naturally (and with a lovely sense of humour) pokes plenty of fun at Americans in this novel, even in his descriptions of South Dakota ('The Dakota spring does not sidle in, half-demurely, half-reluctantly, like spring in England: it explodes with suitable American violence.'). And the novel ends with a 'suitable' shoot-out, too. The narrative is split between third person and first person dialogue, the latter being an older narrator, back in Bradford, remembering his time as a teacher. Like with A Month in the Country, there seems to be little happening at first, but gradually you get the sense of the iceberg below. In this case, America's history, Wounded Knee, and how narratives are remembered (retold!) to favour those who have wronged.
March 10, 2020
So far everything I've read by Carr warms my soul; not an easy thing to do by any stretch. A profoundly 'comic' writer, in both the contemporary and historical meanings of the word. Brilliant, effusive, tragic. Lovely.
(*added the bibliographic errata to the edition: pg count, pub, year, etc.)
(*added the bibliographic errata to the edition: pg count, pub, year, etc.)
July 14, 2023
Another enjoyable JL Carr read, this time his clueless Everyman is a young English teacher sent on a one year teaching assignment to Depression era depopulating dust bowl South Dakota. All the currents of MAGA America are visible here, suspicion of foreigners and un-American ideas, bullying police, the school board keeping any hints of racism out of the curriculum to ensure the right story of the wars against American Indians is told. Although the settings change, Carr's portrayals of unjust, bullying authority are consistent in all of his novels, as is the wry satire sprinkled throughout.
I particularly enjoyed the dialogues the Anglophile local banker had with the narrator and a blind storekeeper and the contrast between the banker's month in England as a young man enjoying his nights with his oversexed innkeeper and the prim narrator's chaste year in Palisades South Dakota.
I particularly enjoyed the dialogues the Anglophile local banker had with the narrator and a blind storekeeper and the contrast between the banker's month in England as a young man enjoying his nights with his oversexed innkeeper and the prim narrator's chaste year in Palisades South Dakota.
March 17, 2021
Funny/ sad / engaging.Mordant tragedy of the small Englishman transplanted to teach in a small town in the wilds of the Dakotas.Also very funny.Short and bittersweet.Our’hero’ escapes the ,horrors of teaching in small town UK for horrors teaching in small town US.Had no idea that he wrote A Month in the Country...which I have not read.
‘The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation’ but,at Pollocks Crossing ,they can go out in a blaze.
Do read it and go back to it
‘The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation’ but,at Pollocks Crossing ,they can go out in a blaze.
Do read it and go back to it
August 4, 2020
JL Carr again uses a narrator’s long-distance reminiscence to recast past events, as he did in his earlier novel A Month in the Country. In that novel, the story is elegiac and sublimely poignant, but in Battle of Pollocks Crossing, Carr invests with comic brio his tale of the wild doings of Americans in the Dakota hinterlands in 1929, just as the stock market takes its dive. I’m not certain what model impelled the narrative tone of A Month in the Country, but I feel confident in suggesting it’s the American tall tale (a la Paul Bunyan as filtered through an English sensibility) that is the guiding spirit in the mock-epic Battle.
The year is 1928, and George Gidner, a teacher from a small Northern school in England, wins himself a job exchange post to Palisades, Dakota. His brief experience of the extravagance and forthright violence in New York and Chicago are followed by long, long miles of prairie and expanse. In the social doldrums of little Palisades, where he lodges with an Anglophile banker, Henry Farewell. George is a fish out of water, unused to the directness of American expression and the way American patriotism is meant to smooth over pettiness, hypocrisy, cruelty, and fanaticism.
In the background are scattered hints of the events leading to Black Friday—long periods of unprecedented bad weather, over-extended banks, and the bursting stock market bubble—leading to the collapse of banks and innumerable personal fortunes. Henry Farewell has in advance of his own bank’s collapse dispersed all the funds he could with families who would be losing their farms, but his “socialism” is resented by better-off citizens of Palisades, and they march behind their zealous and mean-spirited sheriff as if to lynch Farewell. The crowd and sheriff are shown up as cowardly louts, but their animus prevails and the blind owner of the store at Pollocks Crossing, James Aardvark, and his friend Henry Farewell end up dying in chaotic gunfire.
These are big events in young Gidner’s life, but they are conveyed in Carr’s narrative with deft lightness, and what is distilled in this reminiscence is Gidner’s wonder and dismay at the stark contrasts in the American psyche of greatness, pettiness, and savagery.
An aside: I found it interesting that the events leading to the climax of this novel included a whistle-stop visit to Palisades by the Vice President of the United States. While I knew that Herbert Hoover unluckily presided over the advent of the Depression, I was thoroughly ignorant about his office mate. Turns out that it was the silhouette of Charles Curtis that briefly appears in Palisades. (Curtis was a long-time Republican Senator from Kansas who had some Indian blood, Kaw and Osage.)
The year is 1928, and George Gidner, a teacher from a small Northern school in England, wins himself a job exchange post to Palisades, Dakota. His brief experience of the extravagance and forthright violence in New York and Chicago are followed by long, long miles of prairie and expanse. In the social doldrums of little Palisades, where he lodges with an Anglophile banker, Henry Farewell. George is a fish out of water, unused to the directness of American expression and the way American patriotism is meant to smooth over pettiness, hypocrisy, cruelty, and fanaticism.
In the background are scattered hints of the events leading to Black Friday—long periods of unprecedented bad weather, over-extended banks, and the bursting stock market bubble—leading to the collapse of banks and innumerable personal fortunes. Henry Farewell has in advance of his own bank’s collapse dispersed all the funds he could with families who would be losing their farms, but his “socialism” is resented by better-off citizens of Palisades, and they march behind their zealous and mean-spirited sheriff as if to lynch Farewell. The crowd and sheriff are shown up as cowardly louts, but their animus prevails and the blind owner of the store at Pollocks Crossing, James Aardvark, and his friend Henry Farewell end up dying in chaotic gunfire.
These are big events in young Gidner’s life, but they are conveyed in Carr’s narrative with deft lightness, and what is distilled in this reminiscence is Gidner’s wonder and dismay at the stark contrasts in the American psyche of greatness, pettiness, and savagery.
An aside: I found it interesting that the events leading to the climax of this novel included a whistle-stop visit to Palisades by the Vice President of the United States. While I knew that Herbert Hoover unluckily presided over the advent of the Depression, I was thoroughly ignorant about his office mate. Turns out that it was the silhouette of Charles Curtis that briefly appears in Palisades. (Curtis was a long-time Republican Senator from Kansas who had some Indian blood, Kaw and Osage.)
August 4, 2019
The peculiar madness of the hypocrisies at the heart of the American dream and way of life are laid bare in this story of a young priggish teacher’s year long stay in South Dakota. Frequently amusing but with a conclusion that happens quickly and burns slowly in the mind.
September 11, 2017
Not a lot happens in this wonderfully written story but what does happen and those who make it all happen will be forever etched in my mind, as distinctly as the actions of Boo Radley or the Snopes'.
July 29, 2025
British author JL Carr generally wrote from his own experiences. He spent a year in 1938 teaching HS English in SD and in 1985 he penned this novel describing a British teacher’s 1-year stint teaching in a fictional SD town during the depression. Both the author and the protagonist had less than ideal experiences. Those of us raised in SD might find this book interesting, as there is much to recognize in its pages. This book was even short-listed for the Booker in 1985.
November 11, 2011
After reading A Month in the Country (one of my very favorite books), I wanted to experience more of J L Carr's writing. So I was led to The Battle of Pollocks Crossing. From the very beginning I was not disappointed. Carr's very funny, subtle, and lean writing was once again before me to be enjoyed. The secondary characters as well as the main all add equally to the quirky, yet so human, tale. One cannot skim this book because every paragraph holds gems.
I was disappointed as I got to the end though. I was not reading this book to be hit over the head with moralizing. I just wanted a fun, thought-provoking read. I did not want to be drowned in the heartache of the dustbowl years, the terrible injustice done to Native Americans, or man's inhumanity to man. When I want that theme, I will pick books targeting these sorrows. So by the time the book ended my love of the book had changed to simply liking it OK. But I am still glad to have read it, just to experience the first three quarters of the book.
I was disappointed as I got to the end though. I was not reading this book to be hit over the head with moralizing. I just wanted a fun, thought-provoking read. I did not want to be drowned in the heartache of the dustbowl years, the terrible injustice done to Native Americans, or man's inhumanity to man. When I want that theme, I will pick books targeting these sorrows. So by the time the book ended my love of the book had changed to simply liking it OK. But I am still glad to have read it, just to experience the first three quarters of the book.
April 20, 2013
i've read most of Carr's books now, mostly in a short space of time (this was kind of an accident, they were all in the basement at the library, and when i asked for a couple the assistant couldn't remember which ones i'd asked for so brought all of them) and this one sums up the ones before it (although apparently it was the first novel he wrote) - it has the nostalgia of A Month in the Country (which is probably the most perfect, but not my favourite), the bitter reflection and regret of A Season at Sinji and A Day in Summer, the noirish comedy of Harpole and the love of country places and country people of all his books, although here it's the plains and the dustbowl victims and refugees rather than self-satisfied, self-contained rural England. it's not perfect, possibly because it does too much, but i think it's the best of his tragi-comedies. Although you don't have to dig very far into Sinderby Wanderers and Harpole (which are both fabulous) to find the seam of tragedy there, eiher.
August 19, 2018
A rather reserved English school-teacher accepts an exchange post for one year in the hope of discovering the far Western United States of legend, and of reinventing himself in the process.
He achieves neither, unless there is discovery in disillusion as he finds himself in the dried-out plains of Depression Dakota, and in trouble for piercing the falsified history of the local massacre of the Sioux.
There is nevertheless a light, at times almost fairy-tale touch to the narrative, told partly as contemporary events, partly in recollection and reflection by the author after a gap of decades, all against the threatened climax suggested by the title of the book.
The novel is based on Carr's own experience, and there's a strong feeling of place and an affection for the blank canvas landscape that even the writer finds it difficult to explain. It also says something for his own modesty that he does not attempt to claim some sort of epiphany from the experience.
He achieves neither, unless there is discovery in disillusion as he finds himself in the dried-out plains of Depression Dakota, and in trouble for piercing the falsified history of the local massacre of the Sioux.
There is nevertheless a light, at times almost fairy-tale touch to the narrative, told partly as contemporary events, partly in recollection and reflection by the author after a gap of decades, all against the threatened climax suggested by the title of the book.
The novel is based on Carr's own experience, and there's a strong feeling of place and an affection for the blank canvas landscape that even the writer finds it difficult to explain. It also says something for his own modesty that he does not attempt to claim some sort of epiphany from the experience.
March 29, 2018
I grew up in a small town on the prairie so the setting here was oddly familiar. Things were less dramatic during the early fifties when I first awoke to my surroundings. Stuffy offices with hard formed wooden chairs were still present at the county courthouse where my dad - and at times my mom - worked. And I remember a radiator in our first house - a refurbished chicken coup I was told. It forced hot air up through a vent in the floor between the kitchen and the living room - the vent being the divider. Many I time I awoke lying on top of it with a blanket. I still remember lying there waking slightly of the cold until the thermometer clicked and the hot air gushed up around and over me. otherwise I don't recommend a grill for resting - too hard and sharp. George Gidner's use was better: "...hot air from a boiler in the basement blew up through a hole in the maplewood floor so I only had to drag that canvas deck-chair - with CONEY ISLAND FUN PARK INC. stenciled across it back -above the grille to lie in a stupefying euphoria. Denied by pauperism of a sight of Wonders Further Afield, this gentle heat on my bum will always be America's Supreme Delight."
George is an Englishman doing a one-year teacher exchange in Palisade, Dakota. "... although I never saw America the Beautiful, well, many a traveler has crossed and recrossed that great land and learned less, oh very much less of the strange and savage race who dwell there". As a teacher he is a failure, being dismissed for having the integrity not to lie about the "battle" of Wounded Knee. As a chronicler he is also a failure, his various writing projects petering out in dismay or disgust.
He does meet some interesting characters, two of whom become friends - of a sort. And many others offer wisdom disguised as nonsense - or t'other way round: "Here in S.D., we all know where everything is (the high school coach explains) and if we don't, we know There will be just like Here. This is the State where man can look furthest and see least".
There were some good laughs in this admirably short novel, some tragedy too. The narrative is broken in places by an interview George is giving, in his old age, to a young native of Palisade who requests his presence at the unveiling of a monument to be raised at Pollocks Crossing. We hear only George's replies, reminiscing and firmly refusing. More of George's cantankerous nature is apparent here, though visibly budding even in his youth.
At no time does the author mention that this is the year of the start of the Great Depression. The tragedies of families losing their farms and businesses, the closing of banks and the savagery of the citizenry are possibly more understandable if not excusable. During my own early years I found people quite civilized!
George is an Englishman doing a one-year teacher exchange in Palisade, Dakota. "... although I never saw America the Beautiful, well, many a traveler has crossed and recrossed that great land and learned less, oh very much less of the strange and savage race who dwell there". As a teacher he is a failure, being dismissed for having the integrity not to lie about the "battle" of Wounded Knee. As a chronicler he is also a failure, his various writing projects petering out in dismay or disgust.
He does meet some interesting characters, two of whom become friends - of a sort. And many others offer wisdom disguised as nonsense - or t'other way round: "Here in S.D., we all know where everything is (the high school coach explains) and if we don't, we know There will be just like Here. This is the State where man can look furthest and see least".
There were some good laughs in this admirably short novel, some tragedy too. The narrative is broken in places by an interview George is giving, in his old age, to a young native of Palisade who requests his presence at the unveiling of a monument to be raised at Pollocks Crossing. We hear only George's replies, reminiscing and firmly refusing. More of George's cantankerous nature is apparent here, though visibly budding even in his youth.
At no time does the author mention that this is the year of the start of the Great Depression. The tragedies of families losing their farms and businesses, the closing of banks and the savagery of the citizenry are possibly more understandable if not excusable. During my own early years I found people quite civilized!
May 3, 2020
While not having the focus and perfect balance of his A Month in the Country, Carr's great blend of nostalgia, humor and pondering shows up again in Pollocks Crossing. Set in the unforgiving South Dakota of what became the Depression, the book recounts the experience of a year abroad as an exchange between the US and UK in the 30's. Without much knowledge, the protagonist finds himself fairly quickly in Palisades, South Dakota--teaching American literature and history to the children of a wide variety of classic Midwest/Plains' immigrant stock (Scandinavian, German, Russian, Polish and Dutch). No doubt reflecting Carr's own experience teaching in South Dakota a few years later in time, Carr brings out both the positive characteristics of mutual help and fierce independence of these Americans, as well as the repressed history of American double-dealing with the Sioux (Wounded Knee) and the stark dilemma of a somewhat sympathetic banker--who himself had a life changing year abroad in England and thus took an imperfect custodial interest in the protagonist)--of having to foreclose against farmers not able to make payments on their loans versus losing the money of desperate depositors. While stopping short of a classic (I would give this a 3.8), the anecdotes depicted and the extraordinary events in a seemingly otherwise ordinary life will stay with the reader as powerful images of the dislocations caused to ordinary people by the brutal combination of adverse weather, faceless economic forces, and imperfect people. Throughout it all, Carr weaves very funny vignettes of life in the Plains, whether hunting geese at daybreak or teaching reluctant students in the Prairies. On to more JL Carr...
February 19, 2023
SUMMARY - A battle at midpoint, despite being short. Beautiful in moments, and it improved, but a frustratingly disjointed and elliptic whole.
_________________
A disappointment after Carr's glorious 'A Month in the Country ', and in fairness to his range, a very different proposition.
This turned out to be my second mid-eighties Brits Abroad novel in a row, after finishing William Boyd's 'Stars and Bars' (published the year before: 1984). Different editions of the books even featured mirrored cover art, with the Union Jack and Star Spangled Banner in juxtaposition. They both feature a hapless americanophile Brit lost in the reality of a straight-shooting and hard-bitten frontier state, where social niceties get shot down in flames. They play to the comic, about middle-aged white men (c.40) trying to scrape a precarious career (here teacher, there art dealer), while trying and often failing to win the respect of their new countrymen.
Of the two books, Carr's is the more experimental, with a fractured narrative that jumps between thoughts, rather than the comic thriller approach taken by Boyd, which skirts much closer to pulp fiction. I cannot say I hugely enjoyed either, although Carr in particular has a gift for the evocative sentence. He nicely envisions a rural community that pens itself into insularity against the vast wildness of the South Dakota plains beyond. The train (777) takes the old but timelessly beautiful metaphor of transit as a dynamo for novelty (cf. Brief Encounter). His short paragraphs catch lovely truths, but the disjointedness of the whole wasn't my cup of Yorkshire Tea. Others have compared '...Pollock's Crossing' to Lincoln in the Bardo, but I enjoyed the latter immeasurably more
I'm intrigued by the eccentricity and penmanship in Carr, and would continue to seek him out, but this one did make me wonder whether 'A Month in the Country' was a flash in the plan.
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A disappointment after Carr's glorious 'A Month in the Country ', and in fairness to his range, a very different proposition.
This turned out to be my second mid-eighties Brits Abroad novel in a row, after finishing William Boyd's 'Stars and Bars' (published the year before: 1984). Different editions of the books even featured mirrored cover art, with the Union Jack and Star Spangled Banner in juxtaposition. They both feature a hapless americanophile Brit lost in the reality of a straight-shooting and hard-bitten frontier state, where social niceties get shot down in flames. They play to the comic, about middle-aged white men (c.40) trying to scrape a precarious career (here teacher, there art dealer), while trying and often failing to win the respect of their new countrymen.
Of the two books, Carr's is the more experimental, with a fractured narrative that jumps between thoughts, rather than the comic thriller approach taken by Boyd, which skirts much closer to pulp fiction. I cannot say I hugely enjoyed either, although Carr in particular has a gift for the evocative sentence. He nicely envisions a rural community that pens itself into insularity against the vast wildness of the South Dakota plains beyond. The train (777) takes the old but timelessly beautiful metaphor of transit as a dynamo for novelty (cf. Brief Encounter). His short paragraphs catch lovely truths, but the disjointedness of the whole wasn't my cup of Yorkshire Tea. Others have compared '...Pollock's Crossing' to Lincoln in the Bardo, but I enjoyed the latter immeasurably more
I'm intrigued by the eccentricity and penmanship in Carr, and would continue to seek him out, but this one did make me wonder whether 'A Month in the Country' was a flash in the plan.
December 22, 2021
On the surface, this is an exercise in comic hyperbole. Sending up, in succession, the dysfunctional nature of small prairie towns; the patent idiocy of the 1920’s English school system, matched only by the idiocy of its American counterpart (more sophisticated today but probably no better); the well-known ridicule that Americans and Englishmen heap upon each other. But beneath all this hilarity a far more meaningful picture emerges — that of a failed homesteading experiment where the stark realities of attempting to scratch a livelihood out of a parched and merciless landscape better suited to grazing bison was revealed for the folly it was by depression and drought. Its story is told by abandoned farmsteads, unmarked graves and a scattering of broken, derelict men with blank faces.
All of this must have made a deep impression on Carr, for he translates it into a powerful narrative. He masterfully captures the flavor of those many small and large tragedies, most notably in his account of the terrible demise of a “bright eyed girl” named Susanna Massinger and the blighted life of the man she left behind.
This book hides its stark message very skillfully in banter until it’s time to spill the beans. No spoiler here — I will say only that in the end it may take your breath away.
All of this must have made a deep impression on Carr, for he translates it into a powerful narrative. He masterfully captures the flavor of those many small and large tragedies, most notably in his account of the terrible demise of a “bright eyed girl” named Susanna Massinger and the blighted life of the man she left behind.
This book hides its stark message very skillfully in banter until it’s time to spill the beans. No spoiler here — I will say only that in the end it may take your breath away.
January 18, 2022
Another of Carr's time-limited period pieces: A Year in Dakota, if you will, based on the author's own time there, spent teaching during the Depression. It doesn't feel successful as a whole, lurching forwards, grinding to a halt, the approach not revolutionary (though early passages seem to nudge towards an ingenious fragmented structure a la Lincoln in the Bardo) but merely piecemeal, if anything its story too unconventional and perverse, its narrator struggling to penetrate the psyche of his environs, and so keeping us out too.
Carr, though, can dazzle in the moment like few authors in history, at times from nowhere. The dialogue he finds in the mouth of James Ardvaak has the rhythm and the ring of the real. And ultimately his is a book about American violence, about a foreign land with a common tongue, and in it you find his peculiar politics, which prize a vivid individuality born of communal spirit, resulting in a left-wing modern Western, elegiac and frustrating, unsatisfying yet essential.
Carr, though, can dazzle in the moment like few authors in history, at times from nowhere. The dialogue he finds in the mouth of James Ardvaak has the rhythm and the ring of the real. And ultimately his is a book about American violence, about a foreign land with a common tongue, and in it you find his peculiar politics, which prize a vivid individuality born of communal spirit, resulting in a left-wing modern Western, elegiac and frustrating, unsatisfying yet essential.
April 5, 2020
J. L. Carr is an astute observer. His writing at times laugh out loud hilarious, sometimes laden with pathos, trenchantly accurate and occasionally utterly absurd. The tension is there from the first pages and builds irrevocably. Carr’s use of English is sometimes like a brilliant acrobat’s display of skill - awe and pleasure inspiring. ‘With half an eye on Breitmeyer’s Sentence Diagramming made easy, he set about the bread and butter task of tearing asunder his native tongue and laying its writhing entrails across blackboards for subslicing by his students...’
October 16, 2021
A truly unusual book.The blurb on my copy says “Carr of Kettering is a rare and precious specimen,producing commanding and idiosyncratic fiction”How true that is.In my opinion not as good as the the others I have read but still worth a read.The remote West in 1930 is the scene, a n exchange teacher and his year in such an odd place is the subject.I found the start hard to get into but eventually I was drawn in to the strange events that made a lasting impression on the main character.Not an exciting read, but wryly humourous.
May 30, 2025
Charming tale of a a British expat finding himself in a never near its prime flyover country town at the time when trains were still somewhat novel. It’s told in that folky, fableistic voice only the Brits can pull off, but comes a bit short as many of it’s witty observations about the US way of life feel so done over now, or have been witnessed in such exaggerated form that the humor doesn’t peak.
August 10, 2023
Definitely a curiosity, as idiosyncratic as expected from JL Carr. This story of a young Yorkshire teacher's year in South Dakota casts an ironic and rueful eye over human nature, the unpredictabilty of its workings and the strangeness of events. As ever, Carr's sympathy for outsiders and underdogs shines through.
September 29, 2025
A Yorkshire teacher’s year instructing high school English in the middle of Depression and Dust Bowl South Dakota is a most unlikely plot for a novel. But from the perspective of the 1980’s, Carr revisits his earlier experiences from a fictional perspective and creates a funny, tragic, heart-wrenching book that I would put at the very top of Plains fiction.
October 5, 2018
Every bit as good as 'A Month in the Country' to my mind. Culture shock was never portrayed so convincingly as here.
June 15, 2021
DNF halfway through, not interested.
November 12, 2021
Pitch-perfect. seriously. Im being honest. not just filling up space.
February 4, 2023
A bit of a slog to get through. Not in the same class as Carr's A Month in the Country.
October 7, 2023
I loved this - an extraordinary tale of an Englishman’s trip to the American prairie. A real hoot.
July 20, 2024
Disappointed as was hoping for something similar to Sinderby Wanderers & reviewed highly, but not grabbing me at all after quite a few pages so dumped it
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