The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

A Month in the Country, by J.L. Carr



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.

I had heard so many great things about this book that I was half expecting to be disappointed, but I have to concur that this is a perfect miniature and a wonderful evocation of a lost world. The balance between rural idyll, gentle satire and deeper thoughts about society, war and religion is beautifully judged.

I first read this remarkable book in February 2009. I hate February, and a warm month in the country sounded so pleasant when I picked it up to read, and it all paid off. The book is moving, peaceful, and interesting. In it Carr packs layers of nostalgia, making me aware of emotions lost to time but evident in what remains of the past. It was a beautiful experience reading this book, and now years later I look back with a bit more nostalgia. I felt peace and youth and mystery.

Tom Birkin, our youthful narrator, has also been craving a month in the country. It hasn’t been too long since he returned from serving in World War I, and in that short time he has already separated himself from a failed marriage. Birkin has taken a job restoring a medieval judgment painting recently discovered in a church in Oxgodby.

The marvelous thing was coming into this haven of calm water and, for a season, not having to worry my head with anything but uncovering their wall-painting for them. And, afterwards, perhaps I could make a new start, forget what the War and the rows with Vinny had done to me and begin where I’d left off. This is what I need, I thought — a new start and, afterwards, maybe I won’t be a casualty anymore.

Though a sense of restoration is present in the novel, I was much more fascinated by the way Carr plays with the present, with the past, and with memory. In his introduction, Carr discusses the process of writing the book:

And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.

This strange feeling of being out of time takes over in the novel, and I enjoyed it so much more for it.

Birkin’s past is only alluded to, which might seem strange as important as the past and memory is in this novel. However, Carr’s decision to provide only fleeting details of his character’s pasts is very effective. Just as Carr wants us to feel a sort of misplaced nostalgia (“. . . knowing a precious moment gone and we not there.”), he also wants us to feel rather than see the not-so-precious moments.

While uncovering the medieval painting, Birkin becomes obsessed with its painter, the one who centuries ago stood in that exact spot where Birkin stands. That individual’s history has been erased from time and memory, yet here remains something that has been hidden from view for centuries, since only a few decades after its completion. The painting offers a few clues into the artist’s life (somehow he got a hold of some very expensive paint) and even his death. Clearly, he was brilliant. And interestingly, he seemed to have painted the judgment with certain people in mind.

It was the most extraordinary detail of medieval painting that I had ever seen, anticipating the Breughels by a hundred years. What, in this single detail, had pushed him this immense stride beyond his time?

Perhaps that detail or others like it are the reason the painting was covered up so soon after it was created. It’s a sad fact of life that though a residue of evidence remains, much of a life, particularly its emotional intensity, is doomed to be forgotten, often even by those who’ve lived it. Thankfully, some of what remains is at least enough to spark hopefully a shadow of memory. This hope applies, of course, to individual human beings, but also to the great world events they engaged in while they lived.

I’ve left out of this review some of the main characters and elements of the novel. But that’s okay; you should discover them for yourself. It is enough to know that Carr treats all of them with respect, recognizing in all of them latent memory. But to slightly make up for my failure to introduce these characters, here’s a small list from the novel itself.

God, when I think back all those years! And it’s gone. It’s gone. All the excitement and pride of that first job, Oxgodby, Kathy Ellerbeck, Alice Keach, Moon, that season of calm weather — gone as though they’d never been.

Thanks, Trevor, for this excellent review. A Month in the Country is a personal favorite, and your review makes me appreciate it even more than I already did. Incidentally, I find the little that I know about Carr's (and now his family's) Quince Tree Press fascinating.

Haven't had the bandwidth to join in the full read-along - but people's comments on this one made it too good to resist, and I was glad I did read it - absolutely wonderful.

Trevor,
Yours is a great review, and notable for picking up J.L. Carr's theme of reflective time introduced right at the start, in the Foreword.
I feel your peaceful ruminations on your own youth consequent on reading A Month in the Country.

Where I diverge in my opinion compared to your own is in relation to the people, the humans.
You write in your penultimate paragraph "I've left out of this review some of the main characters". I found the character interaction for the most part under developed. An additional 100 pages or so would have helped.
Vinny needed more, I thought,so did Revd. Keach.

Those parts of A Month in the Country focused on the pastoral idyll, are lovely.