A Month in the Country: J.L. Car (Penguin Essentials, 33) - Softcover

Carr, J.L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241972035 ISBN 13: 9780241972038

Publisher: Penguin, 2014

Synopsis

A haunting novel about art and its power to heal, J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

'That night, for the first time during many months, I slept like the dead and, next morning, awoke very early.'

One summer, just after the Great War, Tom Birkin, a demobbed soldier, arrives in the village of Oxgodby. He has been invited to uncover and restore a medieval wall painting in the local church. At the same time, Charles Moon - a fellow damaged survivor of the war - has been asked to locate the grave of a village ancestor. As these two outsiders go about their work of recovery, they form a bond, but they also stir up long dormant passions within the village. What Berkin discovers here will stay with him for the rest of his life . . .

About this title

Review:

"How rare a thing it is - the succesful novella. But that is what I uncovered - just last week - when sitting down to J.L. Carr's "A Month in the Country". Published by NYRB and shortlisted for the Booker, Carr's lean, but endlessly poignant, account of one man's experiences following the First World War left me with a renewed appreciation not only for the novella, but for those with the ability to capture that complex relationship between memory and silence. Carr's work - like a number of NYRB titles - is well worth the afternoon's read. It is, as Rolling Stone said of Joseph Roth's "Flight Without End", a 'minor masterpiece.'" --"Philadelphia Daily News"

"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"
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"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

"Amazingly beautiful: so perfect, so exquisite! ...The nuance and small moments that make up this gorgeous little novella are breathtaking, and the quiet, spare story will completely invade you. Brilliant!" --Dianah H, Powell's City of Books blog

"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

About the Author:

James Lloyd Carr, born 1912, attended the village school at Carlton Miniott in the North Riding and Castleford Secondary School. He died in Northamptonshire in 1994. His novel A Month in the Country won the Guardian Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a memorable film.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0241972035
• ISBN 13: 9780241972038
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112