A Month in the Country

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 10/31/2000
ISBN: 9780940322479
Pages: 135
Weight: 0.37lbs
Size: 8.03h x 5.01w x 0.44d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 10/16/2000 pg. 51
Atlantic Monthly 03/01/2001 pg. 92
Library Journal 02/01/2001 pg. 129
Commonweal 12/07/2007 pg. 28