J.L. Carr - A Month in the Country

Dublin, late in the afternoon.

It had been sunny all day and I'd spent my afternoon walking the city, going nowhere actually. Engrossed by my dinner plans, I walked past a bookshop. I wasn't that hungry yet so I thought I could take a little peek.

I should have known that that plan was doomed.

'I just have to check out one book', is something I've said maybe 50 times and never once stuck to it.

I spent an hour there, browsing through the beautiful books.

The Gutter Bookshop, an independent bookstore,
 situated in the Temple Bar area.

There were so many pretty books there. The artwork on the covers was simply amazing. The Bram Stocker festival was in full swing so they had a whole display of bloody Dracula-esk stories with creepy covers. However, the back wall was what excited me the most. The staff had selected their favorite books and put little sticky notes under if why they'd loved it so much. Which made it, of course, only more difficult to choose. 

Eventually I took the one that said: 'Most beautiful stories I've read in a long time'. 

It was J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country. 

The cover by Roy Menta is so elegant
and pleasing to the eye that even
if I'd hated the book, it still wouldn't have
been a waste of money.

A Month in the Country is set in an English village named Oxgodby in Yorkshire. The main character, Tom Birkin, has come to Oxgodby to uncover a huge medieval wall-painting in the local church. He receives very little salary, just enough for one, maybe two months, hence the title. After that, it's back to London for him. But what kind of life is waiting for him as he returns? The villagers start to wonder. Tom is very quite and keeps to himself. Because Carr only describes scenery and conversations, not Tom's trail of thoughts, you start to wonder about him as well. Throughout the book more and more facts about Tom's life are revealed in a subtle way.

For example, though he never mentions World War one, you find out after a couple pages when somebody is looking at him funny that Tom has a face twitch. Later on, more hints of him being a shell-shocked veteran are being dropped. I like that I had to pay attention to these little clues. The story is about him leaving, to quote Tom: 'hell on earth'. An older version of Tom tells his story, realizing how important that summer in 1920 has been for him. 

Because he falls in love in more than one way. This book is a rare pearl: subtle, delicate and rosy colored like a distant, good memory. You could feel, smell and see everything in Oxgodby. I absolutely recommend it.

Those who need further encouragement; here's an abstract from the writers foreword:

During any prolonged activity one tends to forget original intentions. But I believe that, when making a start my idea was to write an easy-going story, a rural idyll. [..]

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one's end. [..]
Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.    J. L. Carr.

Look through that window, is my advice.