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A Month in the Country

J.L. Carr,

Michael Holroyd (Introduction)

4.11 · Rating details · 8,652 ratings · 1,276 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 painte ...more

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Paperback, 135 pages

Published October 31st 2000 by New York Review of Books (first published 1980)

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Oct 03, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing

Shelves: book-to-film, nyrb

"But then, inevitably, as happens to most of us, first through Saturday umpiring, later Sunday chapel, I was drawn into the changing picture of Oxgodby itself. But, oddly, what happened outside was like a dream. It was inside the still church, before its reappearing picture, that was real. I drifted across the rest. As I have said--like a dream. For a time."

Tom Birken is summoned to the countryside from the teaming streets of London to practice his craft revealing a Medieval painting that was or ...more

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Mar 17, 2018 Cecily rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Cecily by: Sarah

Shelves: historical-fict-20th-cent, god-religion-faith, art

Tom Birkin is hired to reveal and restore a Medieval church mural, covered up over four-hundred years earlier. Expertly peeling back the layers of lime and grime, what he finds on the walls is unexpected in subject and quality. What he learns about people, especially himself, is unexpected too: the process of restoration is personally restorative.

Don’t let the bland cover or blurb lead you to think this is just the charming story of the healing effect of a bucolic month in a quiet village. It i ...more

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Jul 19, 2017 Brina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novella, man-booker

I am a seasonal reader, often craving books with sizzling settings in the summer months and snowy locales in the winter. Last week I saw a review for J. L. Carr's Man Booker winning A Month in the Country and was intrigued enough by the title to read it for myself. Using stunning prose combined with well developed characters, Carr's novella is perfect for a leisurely summer morning.

Tom Birkin had survived the Great War yet returned alienated from civilian life. While in present times his feelin I am a seasonal reader, often craving books with sizzling settings in the summer months and snowy locales in the winter. Last week I saw a review for J. L. Carr's Man Booker winning A Month in the Country and was intrigued enough by the title to read it for myself. Using stunning prose combined with well developed characters, Carr's novella is perfect for a leisurely summer morning.

Tom Birkin had survived the Great War yet returned alienated from civilian life. While in present times his feelings can be ascribed to survivor's guilt or post traumatic stress disorder, in 1920 Birkin did not have an outlet for his feelings. His wife Vinny had left him for another man, leaving the door open for his return. Disillusioned with life as a temporarily single man in London, Birkin accepts a job in a small northern hamlet of Oxgodby to unearth a painting and artist from the 1340s. Even though this out of the way life is not what Birkin had envisioned for himself, he welcomes the opportunity to get out of his situation and avoid the present mess of his marriage.

While in Oxgodby, Birkin encounters a quaint cast of characters. Fellow excavator Michael Moon has come north for the same reasons as Birkin. The two share war stories and their views on life in general as they attempt to meet their deadlines in unearthing medieval men. As the two outsiders enjoy a cordial relationship, Birkin also interacts with locals. Kathy Ellenbeck is a precocious fourteen year old who seems to know everything about everyone. I found her exchanges to be humorous. Meanwhile, Birkin is smitten with the vicar's wife, Alice Keach. A young woman of no more than twenty, Alice is both intuitive and beautiful, yet off limits. It is through his and Alice's non relationship that allows Birkin to assess his own life situation.

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.

All good things come to an end. Birkin narrates this story while looking back 58 years later having never returned to Oxgodby. The story moved by quickly and Birkin finished his work, the church goers almost relieved when he returned to London. Carr's story is indeed appropriate for a lazy summer morning. A Month in the Country is a relaxing novella with strong characters for a summer day, and, like Birkin, when I was finished reading it, it was time to get on with my everyday life. 4 solid stars. ...more

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Sep 21, 2018 Annet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, very-british, hope, literature-pure, age-ing, europe, history, beautiful-poetic

'You're happy, Mr Birkin. You're not on edge any more. Is it because the work is going well? Of course, she was right. Anyway, partly right. Standing up there on the platform before a great work of art, feeling kinship with its creator, cosily knowing that I was sort of impresario conjuring and teasing back his work after four hundred years of darkness. But that wasn't all of it. There was this weather, this landscape, thick woods, roadsides deep in grass and wild flowers. And to the south and n ...more

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Jul 12, 2014 Fionnuala added it

Recommended to Fionnuala by: A host of gr friends

Shelves: art-related, war

When we pick up a book by an author we haven’t read before, we have only the vaguest notion of what themes it will contain. We don't know how those themes will be treated, what attention to detail we will find or if the language will delight us or otherwise. Before we turn over that first page, it is all as blank as a whitewashed wall. We may bring expectations to the blank piece of wall, expectations based on the period the book is set in or from the opinions of readers we trust, but any clarit When we pick up a book by an author we haven’t read before, we have only the vaguest notion of what themes it will contain. We don't know how those themes will be treated, what attention to detail we will find or if the language will delight us or otherwise. Before we turn over that first page, it is all as blank as a whitewashed wall. We may bring expectations to the blank piece of wall, expectations based on the period the book is set in or from the opinions of readers we trust, but any clarity on the book’s contents will remain largely hidden.

Sometimes our expectations are rewarded right at the beginning.
On the first page of this book, I found myself tumbling onto the platform of Oxgodby station alongside the narrator, and the way in which those first words were assembled announced clearly that this was going to be an especially rewarding read. I didn’t quite know how the author would manage this feat but I was confident it would turn out to be so. And although it was a slow reveal, within the first few pages I saw many more signs of promise, a little brush stroke here so that a particular character came into better focus, a little sketch there so that I gained a clearer idea of the background, a little foreshadowing so that I could make a stab at guessing the main theme, a little mystery so that I knew there remained riches yet to be discovered.

As I read on, my first impressions took definite shape and I was able to admire the craft with which the story unfolded. I understood why the author lingered on such and such an idea, why he mentioned that particular subject more than once. As the pages read became greater than the pages left to read, I was able to guess at pretty much everything that remained to be told except for one or two details, but I still delighted in the manner of the telling and the little traces of humour inserted in the text like private jokes between the author and the narrator. It was clear to me too that there was no editorial interference; Carr shaped this book to fit the pattern and timing of the central theme, and without any thought for the dictates of the publishing world or any particular genre it might be expected to fit into. He was a master of his craft.

The book was a treasure that was slowly uncovered; when it was fully exposed, I was astounded by the beauty of the work in its entirety and the image it left on my consciousness will remain with me for a long time to come.
J.L. Carr, I salute you. You were a true artist. ...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Dolors rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Do you believe happiness is overrated?

Recommended to Dolors by: A bunch of GR friends

Shelves: read-in-2015

“If I’d stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.”

Do we recognize happiness when we live it?
Or is it a condition we only perceive in retrospection remembering the past through the rose-tinted glasses of memory?

Wales, 1978. Thomas Birkin, a survivor of the Great War, travels back in time t “If I’d stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.”

Do we recognize happiness when we live it?
Or is it a condition we only perceive in retrospection remembering the past through the rose-tinted glasses of memory?

Wales, 1978. Thomas Birkin, a survivor of the Great War, travels back in time to the 1920s and reconstructs a month spent in the rural village of Oxgodby, North Yorkshire. Employed to recover a concealed medieval painting on the wall of the local church, Thomas believes that a change of scenery will soothe the scars the bloodbath of war and a shattered marriage have imprinted on him. Regardless of his skeptical attitude towards religion, the placid rhythm of summer days ripened by the sun and the quaint temperament of some of the townspeople will guide him inadvertently, not only to uncover the mysteries surrounding the mural painting, but also towards his spiritual restoration.

“This is what I need, I thought - a new start and, afterwards, maybe I won’t be a casualty anymore.”

Thomas is a product of his generation.
Gifted with excessive self-awareness, uncommon lucidity and a rare sense of humor, he speaks from the intimacy of a first-person narrator and makes the reader a sensory participant of the impact a few weeks spent among strangers in self-effacing examination, of how a tiny parcel of his history, infused him with a renewed zest for life.

J.L. Carr’s masterstroke is to tinge the mural of Thomas’ chronicle with a gossamer of vivid observations that sparkle the old flame of hope, which glows brighter than ever when Alice Keach, the Minister’s wife, pierces through Thomas’ numbness with her curious vitality.
The world unfolds in a palette of intricate details, delightful snapshots of daily postcards. A blooming rose in a hat, the comfortable dampness of concentrated craft under the roof timbers, the buzz of insects and the twittering of birds and blades of grass swaying with the gentle breeze, passers-by that matter and others that don’t leave track, silent conversations with the Moon, the lazy hours of a summer inexorably crawling towards a perennial exuberance, the intoxicating scent of serendipitous friendship, of wistful love, sweet, fleeting, unattainable, of wanting to memorize the shape of an oval face before it is too late, the devastating certainty of knowing it is gone forever.
To feel pain means to be alive and the resolution to pursue happiness is a courageous vow that Thomas is willing to take.

The fallen man of the mural painting couldn’t have imagined that a fellow artist would recover his masterpiece, lost to the world under whitewash for more than five centuries. Thomas Birkin never envisioned being haunted by happiness fifty years after a life-altering moment that presented itself wrapped in balustrades of washed-out color. And there was no way I could have known the heart-wrenching journey to the past that awaited me in barely a hundred pages.

Do we glorify the past in order to cope with the present as a form of self-protection? I suppose we do. But if giving way to nostalgic reverie allows us not to regret missed opportunites that choke us in waves of self-pity and prompts us to be grateful for small streaks of fortune instead, I will settle on melancholy any given day. Only then, the tugging at the heart for moments gone for good might leave a sweet, lingering taste in our lips, like the promise of an unsealed kiss, of not squandered words, that might last the span of a lifetime. ...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Sue rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Sue by: Everyone

Shelves: britain, my-own-books, nyrb, wwi, read-2014, historical-fiction, favorites

This will likely enter the list of my all-time favorite books. I found myself saying "glorious" several times and then stopping to thank my parents for instilling in me their love of reading. That brought me so belatedly to this treasure of a book.

I know that the basic story is well known, the young re-patriated soldier, spending a month in the English countryside at a small chapel, tasked to uncover a centuries old mural. But the tale is so much more than that because the prose is so much more ...more

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Jun 27, 2015 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What does it take to be happy? First of all it takes tranquility. And so often the happiest days of our life are those when nothing crucial happened.
So a month in the country was a real treat to the protagonist and A Month in the Country is a real treat to a reader…

Well, we all see things with different eyes, and it gets you nowhere hoping that even one in a thousand will see things your way.

The novel is also a deepest contemplation on the nature of art and history and the harmony of life…

We can

...more

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Jul 11, 2017 Robin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: english, 2017, booker-prize-nominated, buddy-read, novella, literary-fiction, favourites

Can you remember a time in your life when you were truly happy?

If I search my memories, I find a sixteen year old girl sitting in a canoe, with a boy, fishing at two o'clock in the morning by the eerie light of the midnight sun, on a glassy lake near Whitehorse, Yukon. Everything is tingly and pulsing with youth. I look a little more and see myself choking back tears on a hospital bed with my beloved grandfather, hearing him say "I'm still your grandpa, Robin", knowing I would never see him aga Can you remember a time in your life when you were truly happy?

If I search my memories, I find a sixteen year old girl sitting in a canoe, with a boy, fishing at two o'clock in the morning by the eerie light of the midnight sun, on a glassy lake near Whitehorse, Yukon. Everything is tingly and pulsing with youth. I look a little more and see myself choking back tears on a hospital bed with my beloved grandfather, hearing him say "I'm still your grandpa, Robin", knowing I would never see him again, but feeling gratitude for the absolute purity of the moment. I look again, and watch myself, a brand new mother, rocking my baby during one of our midnight meetings, in the stillness, the newborn puzzle piece nested against my breast. Unconditional love was being hatched in my heart.

Those moments are the jewels of life.

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.

I had a feeling of immense content and, if I thought at all, it was that I'd like this to go on and on, no-one going, no-one coming, autumn and winter always loitering around the corner, the summer's ripeness lasting forever, nothing disturbing the even tenor of my way.

The story is bittersweet though, and as much as my heart swells, it is also anguished. The perfect time comes to its inevitable conclusion. The time, like any other, becomes anthologized into history. That which felt never-ending, ended. Chances ran out. Opportunities untaken. But, the older Birkin is aware that perfect moments can stretch into an imperfect life. Things could have turned out differently, but would they have lasted? Is it better that the memories remain totally untainted, a glimmering reminder that life can be hopeful, warm and gentle? This reader was aching for lovers to kiss in the church belfry, but instead, the fleeting month is chastely frozen in time, like a painting, full of promise and optimism.

If I had stayed there, would I have always been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvellous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies. ...more

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Feb 27, 2014 Warwick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: first-world-war, fiction, england, yorkshire

This is the sort of efficient novella that demands a short, incisive review full of judiciously-chosen adjectives, and presumably that's what it will get if MJ ever gets around to reading it. In my case, however, it's unfortunately one of those texts that is going to send me off on a long personal anecdote, for which I offer advance apologies.

When I was twenty-one I ended up, for a variety of reasons, living in Quito, Ecuador. The city in those days was a steamy melting-pot of different national This is the sort of efficient novella that demands a short, incisive review full of judiciously-chosen adjectives, and presumably that's what it will get if MJ ever gets around to reading it. In my case, however, it's unfortunately one of those texts that is going to send me off on a long personal anecdote, for which I offer advance apologies.

When I was twenty-one I ended up, for a variety of reasons, living in Quito, Ecuador. The city in those days was a steamy melting-pot of different nationalities, full of Colombian exiles that had fled the violence north of the border, and teeming with renegade expats from a scattering of unusual countries. My closest acquaintances included an American Vietnam vet, a British army deserter, a Colombian street artist, a badly-disguised CIA agent, a drug-dealer for the Medellín cartel and an Italian architect who kept a Picasso hidden under his bed. It was a weird time. But the first person I met there was a girl from Sweden called Lina. We lived in the same building, and on my first night in the city she took me out for a Mexican and we got hammered on strawberry daiquiris, and the evening slowly evolved into a strange date which she orchestrated with Scandinavian directness: ‘You buy me a drink now. You take me dancing now.’ I was charmed.

I had come to South America to get over someone after an awful breakup, and so I wasn't looking for anything. I wanted zero complications. Right? Sure. As I said to myself on several occasions. So nothing happened that night. Nothing happened the next night either, or any of the nights that followed as we got involved in the strange life of Quito, and dealt with death threats and psychotic outbreaks and false passports and the other things affecting our circle of friends. And we got to know each other quite well. We went away together for a couple of weekends, and talked about past relationships; and most evenings in Ecuador ended with us on our balcony as the sun came up, finishing a bottle of rum and sharing stories. We both had a couple of flings with random people, but nothing very serious.

And then eventually after nine months or so I'd run out of money, and some job offer had come through in England, and I found myself spending the last of my funds on a plane ticket back to London. We drank a lot in my final week. On the last night we just sat on our balcony for hours and had a bottle of rum and listened to the sounds coming out of the karaoke bar two doors down. And when we went back inside she brought me into her room, for the first time since I'd arrived, to say goodbye. And I don't know if it was because of timidity or inexperience or a desire not to spoil anything, or drunkenness, or accumulated misunderstanding, but neither of us did anything except say goodnight and goodbye.

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.

I have no room left to actually review this book, except to say that the situation I'm badly describing is one that novelists don't often try to address, preferring as they do to deal with actual, rather than potential, love affairs. But this book does, and it does it really well. It's the 20s, not the 90s; it's Yorkshire, not Ecuador; she's a vicar's wife, not a Swedish charity worker; most of all, he's a shell-shocked First World War veteran instead of a lazy arts graduate. Even so, there are moments where you recognize every word. ...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Kalliope rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2014, britain, fiction-english

(*)

There is an art in trying to uncover what time hides. And the uncovering itself is also a process of multiple restorations, of bringing back to life, of claiming back from the past what could be foregone: beauty, suffering, happiness, fear, life, death, and hope. They all function in cycles, with troughs and climaxes. One goes and the other one arrives.

Images can be projected and recollections can be written.

A calendar of memory can be read like a book. Nature in its periodic seasons reanimat ...more

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Apr 11, 2017 Adina rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, british, booker

A Month In The Country was my second choice for the The Mookse and the Gripes group revisit of the 1980 Booker shortlist. I selected this novel for two reasons: its brevity and the positive reviews it received from some of my friends. I admit that the subject was not of interest to me, life in the country does not feel too enticing. What can I say, I am a city girl. I love nature but for short periods of time. Actually, three stars is the highest rating I gave to a novel about country life. For ...more

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Jul 19, 2017 Katie rated it really liked it

3.5 stars. This wasn’t what I expected, especially initially. I thought it was written in the 1920s and would be an understated tastefully written meditation on the healing powers of art. Instead the narrator is a bantering almost Jack-the laddish character who refers to his backside as his bum and imagines the vicar and his wife having sex. I was a bit shocked until I saw it was written in 1980.

Half way through I was wondering what all the fuss is about. It was confusing me. The narrator is a 3.5 stars. This wasn’t what I expected, especially initially. I thought it was written in the 1920s and would be an understated tastefully written meditation on the healing powers of art. Instead the narrator is a bantering almost Jack-the laddish character who refers to his backside as his bum and imagines the vicar and his wife having sex. I was a bit shocked until I saw it was written in 1980.

Half way through I was wondering what all the fuss is about. It was confusing me. The narrator is a shellshocked World War One veteran who is hired to restore a fresco in a church that has mysteriously been painted over. But there was another shellshocked veteran called Moon hired to solve another mystery of the village’s past. Why was the central character duplicated? And instead of the fresco the focus of the novel turned to the narrator’s crush on the vicar’s wife. What was that all about? I don’t think I ever quite understood except for the rather banal truism that there’s nothing like romance to heal a blighted soul. Also the narrative begins to focus on his visits to various people in the surrounding countryside. The large cast of characters began to seem more suitable for a novel of 300 pages than a novella of only eighty. Especially when we’re introduced to another potential love interest who, it turns out, will make one appearance in the narrative and then vanish. It all seemed very muddled to me. Little sideshows like this can dull a book’s focus, especially in one as short as this.

I enjoyed the final third more. Suddenly the fresco comes to life. It’s a depiction of Christ’s Judgement and one face in particular haunts the narrator. But oddly this character in the painting has far more relevance to Moon’s fate than it does to the narrator’s, though it appears the narrator doesn’t see this. In fact, more than once, I wondered if this Moon, a black sheep as it turns out, wouldn’t have been a more compelling centrepiece for this story. But he never gets to experience his epiphany in the novel. There’s a mood now of summer dying into autumn. And a poignant sense of how fleeting the idyllic moment is; how the present becomes the past in the blink of an eyelid. The writing, especially the nature description, is excellent throughout. For me though there was a lack of artistry in the way Carr organised his material, some of which didn’t even seem to belong in the novel. At the end of the day it was much more a novella about a missed romantic opportunity than the psychological consequences of war or the healing potential of art. In the final paragraphs Carr tries to shift the focus from the vicar’s wife to the sustaining noblesse of artistic aspiration but it felt a bit forced. As a nostalgic elegy for the virtues of pastoral life it works better. Though one could argue none of those virtues has wholly vanished and this is essentially a sentimental view of change. What vanishes is one’s youth – the young person one once was who enjoyed these virtues. ...more

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May 03, 2014 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: english-novels

I intend to read some novels that are first World War based for this year’s anniversary and this one is the first. It is a novella by a rather eccentric teacher turned writer which absolutely captures a time and place. The plot is straightforward. Tom Birkin is a WW1 veteran who was injured at Paschendaele and is troubled by his memories and dreams and by a failed marraige. It is the summer of 1920 and Birkn has taken a job in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He is to uncover a medieval I intend to read some novels that are first World War based for this year’s anniversary and this one is the first. It is a novella by a rather eccentric teacher turned writer which absolutely captures a time and place. The plot is straightforward. Tom Birkin is a WW1 veteran who was injured at Paschendaele and is troubled by his memories and dreams and by a failed marraige. It is the summer of 1920 and Birkn has taken a job in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He is to uncover a medieval mural that has been painted over for many years. His living accommodation is the belfry of the Church. Nearby another war veteran, James Moon is digging for a lost grave which may hols some sort of secret because it was placed outside of the churchyard. He also has his scars from the war.
There is a full cast of local characters; the local vicar and his beautiful wife and the rival Wesleyan Methodists. Carr, being brought up in the Wesleyan tradition captures the chapel rituals and attendees very well. Carr said he wanted the effect to be something like Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree in relation to the local characters.
The novella is beautifully written. It is a hot summer and has the nostalgic feel of soporific summers long gone and barely imagined. It feels a little like Cider with Rosie; the end of an age. The remoteness of the village means there is a lag with the changes taking place in society. It feels like the end of something and Birkin feels that as well. Carr illustrates rural crafts and customs about to disappear. He even mentions the food. Seed Cake!! My grandmother used to make seed cake; it’s rarely seen now. It is about love, loss, pain and healing; but it is all subtly done.
Birkin is looking back from 1978 and I am reminded of Hartley’s quote “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”. There are also interesting reflections about art and the relationship between the painter and the latter day restorer. There is potential for Birkin to have a relationship, but that would have spoilt the subtlety of the whole thing. It is a wonderful, subtle and heartbreaking novel; one of the best in this genre I am sure. ...more

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Jan 31, 2012 Ted rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lit-british, reviews-most-liked, beach-fun-fiction

This is Carr’s masterpiece, short and relatively unheralded as it is. It did win the Guardian prize, and was short-listed for the Booker; and in 1987 was made into a motion picture. This was the height of Carr’s fame and recognition. According to Michael Holroyd’s introduction to the NYRB Classics edition, this wouldn’t have affected Carr one way or the other; he was in Holroyd’s words “an outsider, a man of integrity, who wrote from his sense of privacy.”

In Carr’s forward, he tells us

my idea w

my idea was to write an easy-going story, a rural idyll along the lines of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree. And … I wanted its narrator to look back regretfully across forty or fifty years but, recalling a time irrecoverably lost, still feel a tug at the heart.

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.

It is the summer of 1920. Again in his forward, Carr describes this setting as “the plow horse and candle-to-bed age”, when he himself grew up in this part of Yorkshire. Birkin is excited about the task ahead, and is an optimistic soul who tends to look on the bright side of things. But there are wounds in his background: his wife has left him, and he has been marked by his experiences in the War (Passchendaele), which have produced not only a severe facial tic but also memories which he would just as soon not have.

The story Carr tells is not complicated. What I enjoyed even more than the story itself (which is superb) is the way in which he describes the setting, the way that the setting affects Birkin, and the way in which the setting, both time and place, almost becomes the story. The rural landscape of fields, hills and woods, the slow-paced, deliberate life-style of the people, their habits and customs, even the weather, are described in beautiful prose by Carr. For example, as Tom reminisces late in the story

Ah, those days … for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmer of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young.

No, the story is not complicated. But neither is it shallow. There is a depth to Birkin, of course - he is a man of emotional, psychological, intellectual, and artistic interest, and is revealed to be affected deeply by both people and setting in all these facets of his nature. The supporting actors too (mostly) are not simply rural caricatures; they are more than just sketches, quickly becoming real people who demand our attention and tug at our sensibilities.

Here I’ve gone on so long, the review is nearly longer than the story – but nowhere near as good. Do yourself a favor and read this book. You might get through it in a couple hours. But please, don’t rush through it at top speed. Take pleasure in it, slow down once in awhile and let the evocative prose take hold of you. Be transported to a place, and back to a time, which few of us know first hand, but might wish we did. I do.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Aug 10, 2014 Richard Derus rated it really liked it

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: 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 Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

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.

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.

She lived at a farmhouse gable end to the road--not a big place. Deep red hollyhocks pressed against the limestone wall and velvet butterflies flopped lazily from flower to flower. It was Tennyson weather, drowsy, warm, unnaturally still. Her father and mother made me very welcome, both declaring they'd never met a Londoner before. They gave me what, in these parts, was called a knife-and-fork "do," a ham off the hook, a deep apple pie, and scalding tea. In conversation it came out that I'd been Over There (as they called it) and this spurred them to thrust more prodigious helpings upon me.

Novelists store moments like this, personal moments, in vaults that all of us have. The difference is the vault of the artist preserves all the details and nuances. Most of us come back from the vault with tatters and shreds; Carr, and others like him, come back with precious parures that flash a dazzle upon us commoners.

The genius of this short novel, under 50,000 words, is that it doesn't tart up the glory of the images with overwrought settings. Keep it simple, make it well, and quality will out. It is a joy to find laughs and savors in the same book. It is a rare joy to find them polished to a deep flash, set at just the right moment, and not vulgarly paraded for our approval but rather simply put in their proper place and left for us to notice as we will.

I made a run at this book after reading most of a very, very unhappy and terrible book. I was weighed down, felt that page-turning was labor. After a good sleep, I picked this gem up again and began at the beginning. It was the correct decision.

We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever--the ways 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.

How much poorer my world would be without the quiet luxury of these images in it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Hugh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-shortlist, modern-classics, modern-lit, read-2017

When The Mookse and the Gripes group decided to revisit the 1980 Booker shortlist, this was the book I most looked forward to reading, and it did not disappoint, except that it was over too soon.

The narrator is Tom Birkin, who is looking back after many years to his first summer of work after returning from the Great War. He arrives in Oxgodby, a small village in Yorkshire, because a bequest to the local church has stipulated that a medieval wall painting should be uncovered and he has accepted ...more

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Feb 04, 2017 Perry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mina-favoritböcker, stela-eða-láni, books-most-loved

Happiness of Halcyon Days Haunts Me; I Wait for Pain to Pass

"Now for a breath I tarry,
Nor yet disperse apart--
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart."
A.E. Housman, quoted in epigraph to A Month in the Country

An extraordinary, heart-rending novel, written as a sort of twilight benediction to a pastoral place and its people.

Never has such a short novel impacted me so profoundly, dramatically, making me reflect on a few golden days in my past, my own in which I can close my eye Happiness of Halcyon Days Haunts Me; I Wait for Pain to Pass

"Now for a breath I tarry,
Nor yet disperse apart--
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart."
A.E. Housman, quoted in epigraph to A Month in the Country

An extraordinary, heart-rending novel, written as a sort of twilight benediction to a pastoral place and its people.

Never has such a short novel impacted me so profoundly, dramatically, making me reflect on a few golden days in my past, my own in which I can close my eyes and smell the dust, taste the feint salt on her upper lip, hear the voices, see faces that moments ago would have been obscured by the fog of time, feel the sun on my face, warming me in the illusion that life will surely last forever: "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."

The story follows Tom Birkin, who is still recovering from the trauma of his service in WW I and is running from a broken marriage, as he takes on a job to restore a medieval mural of the apocalypse in a small church in a remote Yorkshire village. He finds himself being restored by love, for the simple surroundings, the intricacy and beauty of the art and a young woman.

Ah, those days...for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young.

If I'd stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies. A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr

...more

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May 16, 2014 Margitte rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015-read, british-author, british-novels

I am not going to write an elaborate review for this book. It is just one of those books that crosses one's path and changes everything inside the reader. There's soul-food in the story, positive vibes, a gentle sense of humor, and a hope being bourne from the protagonist's thoughts and heart.

When the protagonist is tasked to restore a 500-year-old painting which have been white-washed over a hundred years after it was painted, he leaves behind a shattered life in London. He survived WWI but his ...more

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Mar 09, 2019 Jr Bacdayan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Life is filled with moments. Moments of cowardice, of hesitation, moments when our courage fail us: to make a small step, to take a big leap, to dance, or move our lips a few inches to those of another. Repetitive moments of daily toil: eating, fixing the bed, performing our trade, defecating. Moments of idleness when we do nothing but lie down and embody the emptiness within us. These moments are not remembered, are forgotten, or glossed over with untruth. These moments fill out what is left af Life is filled with moments. Moments of cowardice, of hesitation, moments when our courage fail us: to make a small step, to take a big leap, to dance, or move our lips a few inches to those of another. Repetitive moments of daily toil: eating, fixing the bed, performing our trade, defecating. Moments of idleness when we do nothing but lie down and embody the emptiness within us. These moments are not remembered, are forgotten, or glossed over with untruth. These moments fill out what is left after the highlights of our lives have been told. And so there they remain, dull threads in our chaotic tapestry of life, until such a time when we are compelled to revisit.

The process of recalling the minute moments of ones life is an arduous labor. It is no different from digging for coffins in a cemetery or akin to uncovering a hidden fresco on an old church wall. You go back through time, open the locks of recollection, and are rewarded with a decaying piece of memory. Often there are no details left but a vague feeling of association to a place, a sensation, or an emotion.

This small novel is about those forgotten moments, the moments that fade into nameless places we have passed by, sensations that have coursed through us, and emotions that we still feel.

A month in the country tells of the insignificant piece of time in Tom Birkin’s life when he passed by the provincial town of Oxgodby. Birkin recalls the weeks he spent uncovering an ancient fresco in the village church and the moments in between filled with irrelevant details and inconsequential episodes. The novel is compact, simple, and yet filled with wisdom. As a human, an artist of sorts, an estranged husband, and war veteran, we see Birkin’s hardened attitude towards his life and the hopeful contentment he feels towards his future. There is much to ponder on.

“All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.” ...more

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Mar 11, 2019 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019

According to Dr. Johnson's 'Dictionary , a novel is a small tale, generally of love.

Mr. Carr is modest in choosing this quote as epigraph for his novel. There nothing small about this story, despite the relatively thin size of the tome. I have noticed before, that a lot of my favorite novels do not need a thousand pages, or world shattering conflicts to get to the point. "A Month In the Country" is just further confirmation of my theory that in art size doesn't matter. What matters is the rich ...more

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Jul 14, 2017 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: a-buck-and-change, the-british-invasion, buddy-reads

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.

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 travel ...more

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Aug 24, 2016 Roger Brunyate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: illustrated-review, hidden-gems, religion, ww1

The Summer After the War

[NOTE: I have recently reviewed Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent. In the appendix to the British paperback edition, she lists a number of novels as being especially important to her: I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith), A Month in the Country (J. L. Carr), Jane Eyre, Tess of the Durbervilles, and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Most of them I have read, but I knew the first two only by reputation. Perry has inspired me to remedy that omission.]

Although brief and char ...more

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Dec 10, 2016 Fiona MacDonald rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-books

I have never read anything quite like this before. It was such a simple book, a simple story, yet so intrinsically beautiful that it almost moved me to tears. The story of a young man, bruised and emotionally battered from WW1 finding his way in the small village of Oxgodby is something to treasure. The people he meets, the things he sees and the lasting memories of one single month are just breath-taking. It feels completely immoral to actually rate this title, but I will give it the highest po ...more

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Mar 26, 2018 Tras rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites

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.

An England that no longer exists - the dying embers of the horse age, Europe devastated by the First World War, and the annihilation of several generations of men.

In a small Yorkshire church, a medieval mural has been discovered und ...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Nigeyb rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favourites

A gorgeous eulogy for the perfect Summer

Birkin, a damaged World War One veteran, is employed to find and restore a mural in a village church, whilst another veteran is employed to look for a grave beyond the churchyard walls. The writer looks back 58 years later, and as an old man, on his idyllic Summer of 1920. The bitter-sweet happiness the writer describes feels fragile and ephemeral which makes the story all the more beautiful, powerful and haunting. This short book packs so much in: love, l ...more

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Oct 14, 2017 Laysee rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Laysee by: Fionnuala

Shelves: five-star-books

Summer 1920. Tom Birkin, a penurious Londoner in his early twenties, battered by war and a failed marriage, sought a fresh start for himself in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He was excited by the prospect of uncovering and restoring a recently discovered medieval wall-painting in the village church. At less than 120 pages, A Month In The Country is a beautiful novella of restoration and healing.

I was enchanted by the opening pages that showed Birkin arriving on a rainy evening, grudg Summer 1920. Tom Birkin, a penurious Londoner in his early twenties, battered by war and a failed marriage, sought a fresh start for himself in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He was excited by the prospect of uncovering and restoring a recently discovered medieval wall-painting in the village church. At less than 120 pages, A Month In The Country is a beautiful novella of restoration and healing.

I was enchanted by the opening pages that showed Birkin arriving on a rainy evening, grudgingly received by the vicar, and bedding down in the bell-chamber of the church. From the window, he beheld "the hills heaving like the back of some great sea-creature, dark woods washing down its sides into the Vale." There was an atmospheric beauty to the writing and humor in Birkin's observations of what was to be his home for a month in the country. On his first morning in Oxgodby, Birkin told himself, "I was going to be happy, live simply…" Of his first real job, he declared, "I willed it to be something good, really splendid, truly astonishing." His quiet optimism won me over.

In this rural idyll that came close to a latter day Eden, Birkin was soon inducted into the social and religious life of the village. It was lovely to read of new friendship ties forged with the Ellerbeck family, Alice Keach (the vicar’s wife), and Charles Moon (an outsider like Birkin himself on a different mission of uncovering a buried past). The hospitality of the village folks, Birkin's reluctant involvement in church life, often recounted with hilarity, made for delightful reading.

Birkin's past was not delved into at any great length but just enough to shed light on his present quest for change. The story focused on the moments of discovery Birkin made that summer through the veil of sadness. He was "surprised by joy" but not in a religious sense. It was a restorative encounter conferred both by the calm haven found in nature and a wholly absorbing vocation.

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.

Read A Month In The Country by J. L. Carl. It is poignantly written and a veritable treat. When it ended, I felt "a tugging at the heart" and sat silently for a long while. ...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Declan rated it really liked it

Shelves: nyrb

The descriptions in 'A Month in the Country' do not draw particular attention to ambient sounds or noise (it is in any case a consistently subtle book in which everything occurs with a minimum of fuss), but I suspect that one of the major comforts of Tom Birkin's time in Oxgodby, and one of the reasons he is content for the work of restoration to take longer than he had intended, is that the rich, enveloping quite of the church - birdsong outside; the rhythmic tapping of his tools; the barely di The descriptions in 'A Month in the Country' do not draw particular attention to ambient sounds or noise (it is in any case a consistently subtle book in which everything occurs with a minimum of fuss), but I suspect that one of the major comforts of Tom Birkin's time in Oxgodby, and one of the reasons he is content for the work of restoration to take longer than he had intended, is that the rich, enveloping quite of the church - birdsong outside; the rhythmic tapping of his tools; the barely discernible sound of Moon digging - is a startling contrast to the uproar of war which assailed his ears so recently.

That work of restoration is, of course, personal as well as practical. He is slowly removing the accretions of many decades from the wall at the back of a small church, to reveal an exceptional work of medieval painting. But - and again there is nothing laboured about the way this is done - he also begins to reveal and reconcile aspects of himself that have been sundered by the war and a difficult marriage. The purposeful nature of his work and the excitement of what he, day-by-day, is discovering about the mural together with the comradeship of archaeologist Moon and his easily formed friendships with several of the people in the village help him begin to understand the importance of human contact and community involvement. More than with any other, his conversations with the vicars beautiful wife give him a real sense of what it is to hope again; to feel the absolute nowness of this particular time; to comprehend the persistence of desire despite all that he has experienced. It brings him too, through two visits to the vicarage, to an understanding of the undeclared despair that can also dwell in this environment.

All of what he relates in the book is told from the perspective of many years hence and so there is a sense that the entire story has gained a dusty layer of nostalgia and how could it not? It was a lovely month, spent in a beautiful, remote place, among gracious and complex people. It was, above all, a time that allowed for repair and, most unexpectedly, a time replete with possibility, even if little of it was realised back then. This, I'd like to suggest, might be its soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQbz... . ...more

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Jun 29, 2017 Connie G rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, england, classic, artists-or-art

An older Tom Birkin is looking back to a special summer of contentment and healing in Yorkshire. Birkin, a World War I veteran, has been hired to remove layers of whitewash and grime from a religious mural in a village church. Another war veteran, Charles Moon, was employed by a prominent family to find the tomb of an ancestor in the graveyard near the church. As Birkin uncovers the mural of the Last Judgement and contemplates hell, he thinks back to Passchendaele--hell on earth.

The enjoyment of ...more

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Aug 03, 2017 Paul Secor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: keepers-at-least-for-now, favorite-fiction

Other reviews here have told the story of Tom Birkin and his narration of the months he spent in Oxgodby recovering from his experiences in the Great War and the breakup of his marriage. I'll just say that I very much liked the generous quality of his narration and his gratitude for the time he spent with the people of Oxgodby.
Tom Birkin has one great regret from the time he spent there. I imagine that all of us have at least one great regret from some time in our lives. A Month in the Country ...more

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About J.L. Carr

J.L. Carr

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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 adopte 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.

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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“And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart—knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. 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 belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. ” — 131 likes

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