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A Month in the Country
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A Month in the Country Paperback - 2000

by J. L. Carr; Introduction by Michael Holroyd

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This seller has earned a 4.09 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.
4.09 / 5 (24843 total reviews)

Reader reviews for A Month in the Country

Review summary

This seller has earned a 4.09 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.
4.09 / 5 (24843 total reviews)

Readers widely praised J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country as a slender, lyrical novella whose quiet surface conceals striking emotional depth. Many lauded its tender portrait of a shell?shocked First World War veteran restored by work, friendship, and an English summer, noting how the fresco’s slow revelation mirrors his own healing. The prose, sense of place, and humane wit drew consistent acclaim, with themes of memory, missed chances, art’s redemptive power, and bittersweet nostalgia resonating long after the final page. A minority found the focus occasionally diffuse or certain details puzzling, but the consensus deemed it a haunting, hopeful gem that rewards lingering over its brief length.

Readers say this book is:
lyricalrestorativeevocativebittersweetnostalgictenderatmosphericcontemplativehumanequick read

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From the publisher

A short, spellbinding novel about a WWI veteran finding a way to re-enter--and fully embrace--normal life while spending the summer in an idyllic English village.

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.

Details

  • Title A Month in the Country
  • Author J. L. Carr; Introduction by Michael Holroyd
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 160
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher New York Review of Books, New York
  • Publication date 2000-10-31
  • ISBN 9780940322479 / 0940322471
  • Weight 0.37 lbs (0.17 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.03 x 5.01 x 0.44 in (20.40 x 12.73 x 1.12 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 1900-1949
    • Cultural Region: British
  • Category Fiction - Historical
  • Library of Congress subjects Historical fiction, Psychological fiction
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 00009412
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"Unlike anything else in modern English Literature." — The Spectator
"Carr’s blessedly small tale of lost love is also a small hymn about art and the compensating joy of the artist, both in giving and receiving. It stays with us, too, and is oddly haunting." — The New Yorker
"Carr has the magic touch to re-enter the imagined past." — Penelope Fitzgerald"The work is virtually perfect, and written with a great deal of liveliness and wit." —Michael Wood"A unique and special experience, a visit to a special time and place, deeply observed and portrayed in beautiful prose." — The Washington Post
"Carr’s prose is spare, elegant and buoyed with wit; the idyllic countryside and its inhabitants are rendered in affectionate detail." — Publisher’s Weekly
"A Month in the Country…is one of those perfect, precious novels that you want to loan to friends, buy all your relatives for Christmas and give to your latest paramour." — Eve Claxton, Time Out New York

Citations

  • Atlantic Monthly, 03/01/2001, Page 92
  • Commonweal, 12/07/2007, Page 28
  • Library Journal, 02/01/2001, Page 129
  • Publishers Weekly, 10/16/2000, Page 51

About the author

James Lloyd Carr was born in 1912 and attended the village school at Carlton Miniott in Yorkshire. A head teacher, publisher, and novelist, his books include A Day in Summer (1964); A Season in Sinji (1967); The Harpole Report (1972); How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup (1975); A Month in the Country (1980), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Battle of Pollock's Crossing (1985), also shortlisted for the the Booker Prize; What Hetty Did(1988); and Harpole & Foxberrow General Publishers (1992). He died in Northhamptonshire in 1994.

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of Lytton Strachey, Bernard Shaw, and Augustus John. He has also written a memoir, Basil Street Blues. He lives in London with his wife, the writer Margaret Drabble.

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

by J.L. Carr, Michael Holroyd

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A Month in the Country
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A Month in the Country

by Carr, J.L.

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics)
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A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics)

by J.L. Carr; Michael Holroyd

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A Month In the Country
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A Month In the Country

by Carr, J L,

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MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
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MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

by CARR,JL

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A Month in the Country
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A Month in the Country

by Carr, J. L

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

by J.L. Carr

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

by J.L. Carr

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MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
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MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

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

by J.L. Carr

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