A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics) by J.L. Carr Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.94 You Save: $7.01 (54%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.46 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics)
Book Review: Poignant, Memorable,Affecting
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the few works of fiction that I have returned to on several occasions over the years.I will leave the synopsis to others who have more than adequantly reviewed the tale, but would add that in my view - being capable of being read in a couple of hours - it lends itself perfectly to a cosy winter's afternoon beside the fire, or ( for me ) is ideal for taking into the country on a Summers day, finding a quiet corner of a pleasant meadow and whiling away time. I recall that some years ago this book was made into a film which, given the actors involved - including Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth, does perhaps speak volumes for the strength of the story. In short, this is a little gem, wonderfully observed and beautifully controlled.Book Review: A classic, but ...
Summary: 4 Stars
This is yet another of those books where I think I must have missed something. Everywhere I read what a classic it is, but it just didn't do it for me. I found that unlike some books about WW1 (e.g. Pat Barker's), it didn't even evoke the time particularly well for me. A restorer of murals goes to Yorkshire for a month in 1920, and falls in love. Don't read this if you want an action-packed blockbuster. On the other hand, I admired the well-crafted sentences and the way in which the claustrophobia of a hot summer seen through memory was evoked.Book Review: Just wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful I have ever read. It is deceptively simple and delightfully slow-paced, full of Lawrence-like depictions of a vanished pastoral landscape. The focal points are a casual and peculiar friendship between two war-scarred, shell-shocked men and just a barely discernible hint of a female love interest. In a book barely 100 pages long, the author not only manages to give us a story that flows like a stream, but also achieves stunning characterisation, bitter indictment of war and a corresponding celebration of peace, a little suspense, and even a twist in the tail. An exemplary study in subtlety.Book Review: This is the real Regeneration
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't stress enough the pleasure I derive from reading and re-reading this book. Tom Birkin, a restorer of church murals and WW1 veteran, spends the smouldering summer of 1920 in a small Yorkshire village restoring a mural in the local church. Birkin's work, his deepening relationship with the local inhabitants and surrounding countryside, and his sudden, but unrequited, love for the local vicar's wife all serve to begin the healing process for his broken spirit. Carr's wry, but beautifully crafted and understated style prevents any hint of sentimentality or self-pity from ruining the atmosphere of the novel. Carr shows Birkin slowly rediscovering the basic decency and humanity of ordinary people, places and experiences. This is Oxgodby's gift to Birkin and Carr's gift to us. Magnificent.Book Review: This book, as its soft words slip by, vibrates in the memory
Summary: 5 Stars
Birkin, the ageing narrator, reflects on the summer of 1920 when he - a young, shell-shocked and cuckolded survivor of World War One - spent some weeks in the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He is there, ostensibly, to uncover a lost medieval mural in the village church; a painstaking process of recovery. Yet while there, living and working in the church, he discovers treasures of far greater value in the people around him. He is shown anew the gifts of compassion and acceptance, of friendship and respect that he thought the Great War had blown away forever. Spanning one short, hazy English summer Carr has written a short, hazy English novel to treasure. Its ending comes, like that of the season itself, too soon and the reader is deprived of nothing less than the light of a sun. Magical and mournful, this novel's controlled simplicity numbs me each time I read it.