A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Recommended to me as a book that can change a life I was sceptical - I rarely agree with such high praise - I feel strongly now that this truly is a story that stays with you and makes you consider your values and life style today. It is a great novel and will be read long after some of the detritus acclaimed these days has been flushed away by our blessed ally, Time. However, despite this he remains grateful for this perfectly captured moment and hopeful for his future. We discover, quite late on, that Moon had been found in bed with his batman, stripped of his captain’s rank and sent to a military prison, despite a record of bravery which had won him the Military Cross.

Then as he peels back the layers of plaster, dirt and time, revealing magnificent medieval mural, he also feels that he is carefully re-emerging from his trauma. Set at the close of the Great War and enacted amongst a Yorkshire village community beneath the slowly unravelled mystery in the medieval wall paintings of the church. With a screenplay by Simon Gray, the novel was made into a 1987 film, directed by Pat O'Connor and starring Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, Natasha Richardson and Patrick Malahide. This limited edition uses the revised version of the text that Carr himself would publish the following year at his Quince Tree Press.

Perhaps it only seems that way when enough years have passed for harsh reality to have been hidden beneath several layers of whitewash. I don’t want to reveal much more about what happens in the novel, other than to give a flavour of some of the keynotes.

And, then, after several weeks, Moon tells him that the twitch has gotten much better, adding, “I don’t suppose you noticed it happening, but Oxgodby’s just about ironed you out. Birkin’s job of clearing away centuries of overpaint, soot and dirt from what turns out to be a stunningly imagined Judgement scene underneath starts as simply something to fill his time at a moment when his life has fallen apart.

Above all, there is a marvellous description of the great wall-painting of the Judgement Day which Birkin is employed to uncover. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Hermione Lee was president of Wolfson College, Oxford from 2008 to 2017 and founding director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing. Helpfully it was quickly accessible for for being straightforward and actually explained the mystery more clearly than the book. I have really enjoyed your review, Jacqui, and have been reading it alongside Melissa’s – you both make a great case for what I already knew to be a good book. Nigel Andrews of the Financial Times found it "like a pastoral parable that has been left outside in the damp too long, causing its batteries to go flat" [18] and following a 2008 screening, Sam Jordison of The Guardian suggested "even though this film is (unusually) faithful to the book.Undeterred, Watkins contacted the agents of the cast and director, and eventually the online fan clubs "Friends of Firth" and "Ken Friends". By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

I am quite glad I never had to teach the novel, because I know how difficult it would have been to get Sixth Formers to understand that decision, although it is utterly in character.

Short enough to allow for a quick reading, this economical work doesn't lack depth in any way; the characters are really funny and serious, being very easy to empathize with them in their joy and their sadness. Just before he leaves Oxgodby for ever, he goes to look at the painting again and knows that, ‘whatever else had befallen me during those few weeks in the country, I had lived with a very great artist . Birkin's idyll in the country is brought into relief by what Birkin has gone through in the past and the disappointments that, it is implied, await him.