A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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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. What is the elixir for experiencing the atrocities of war? Happy days in Oxgodby can never be relived, A single immense piece of furniture like an internal buttress. In any ordinary room it would have been grotesque but, here, it fell into perfect scale. I’ve no idea what it was. It could have been a Baroque altar-piece, an oriental throne, a gigantic examination exercise performed by a cabinet-maker’s apprentice.” Tom Birken is summoned to the countryside from the teaming streets of London to practice his craft revealing a Medieval painting that was originally painted 500 years previously, and had been whitewashed over about a hundred years later. It is a picture of doom predating the fantastical, terrifying visions of Bruegel by at least a hundred years. The masked handprint left by an anonymous individual on a wall may invite from its hidden place for its uncovering and thereby regenerate another, unrelated, individual. A mouth of Hell depicted, beautifully, may summon up the will to live after walking through a war of hell.

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. 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.It starts that way, but, as Birkin recognizes at the end of his time, he “lived with a very great artist, my secret sharer of the long hours I’d labored in the half-light above the arch.”

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.”I saw her in the yard. You seemed to have a lot to say to each other. Now, didn’t you find her a bit of a stunner? Fancy that gem of purest Ray serene hidden away in Oxgodby’s unfathomable caves! Well, come on, admit it”. He adds, later, “I stumbled on, tossing in pleas to be forgiven for unmentionable sins I felt were His responsibility. . . rather than mine.” 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. 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. Perhaps It is this simplicity and normality that affects Birken the most profoundly, for his life has been shredded by the war. There is also the mystery of the painting, which Birkin uncovers, and the grave that Moon seeks, to add an extra touch of interest.