NYRB Classics discussion

The Discussion for J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country.

Hope you all enjoy!

Nick

This is short and looks really good. I'm going to try to fit this one on to my overflowing plate of books.

About one in the morning, when I still couldn't get to sleep, I picked this up and read Michael Holryod's introduction and was moved to tears. I can't wait to read the story itself. Carr seems like not only a remarkable author, but a wonderful person as well. In the introduction, Holryod mentions that AMINC was written to emulate Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree , which, if it is not too long, I may try to read in tandem with this.

i got my copy...maybe i will read it this Saturday morning. :)

I'm getting close to starting it, though may be another week. Pretty excited though, it does look really good. We're working on having a e-book by the end of August, which may not really help up here, but the conversation can continue for those e-book only readers.

And of course, there was a film made of it starring Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, and the late Natasha Richardson. How could it be bad!

Nick

COLIN FIRTH?!

Marieke wrote: "COLIN FIRTH?!"

MUST. WATCH. NOW.

Kate wrote: "Marieke wrote: "COLIN FIRTH?!"

MUST. WATCH. NOW."

haha! i wish we could tag friends like on FB. i'll have to otherwise direct a certain friend (who is a member of this group) to this discussion. lol.

I read this book a few years ago, and it is still one of my favorite books of all time. I have to read it again now.

Like Trevor, I've read this already but plan on quickly reading again so I can join in on the discussion.

Oh woah! Seriously, I especially want to read this now.

Cindy wrote: "Oh woah! Seriously, I especially want to read this now."

*snicker* (i thought so!)

I saw the movie many years ago. It was very good.

Seana wrote: "I saw the movie many years ago. It was very good."

Excellent. I'm going to get my hands on it ASAP. I started the book this morning and I am enjoying it immensely.

The film version is excellent. I recently replaced my old VHS copy with the DVD. Well worth catching

i am really, really enjoying this book. Normally i would have finished it already, but i've been thoroughly distracted by the Olympics. so i'm only about half done. but it's okay because i am always so happy to pick it up again!

Okay, I've started, and I don't think it will take me very long to finish as it isn't very long. So far so good. It feels a bit Proustian with it's past setting but glimpses of a later, older narrator, like Birkin is remembering a period and place in his life that was incredibly important to him from a later time.

What do you think?

Nick

I just finished it this morning. It is full of little surprises. I loved it but haven't written a review yet.

I had never heard of this author before so I am also wanting to find out more about him. Apologies, I didn't read the NYRB edition but I loved it so much I plan to order it. So if there is background info in it, that is why I don't know anything about the author yet.

Hello folks,

I've had this group recommended to me, so I thought I'd join in. I finished A Month in the Country today, and particularly appreciated how Carr carried through the theme of uncovering the hidden. Some engaging characters, too.

David

Welcome David!

I finished the book over the weekend and really enjoyed it. For such a slim little book it had so much in it: history, national identity, love, sexuality, art, religion, betrayal, trauma, war, memory, etc.

Pretty incredible that Carr is able to fit all that in.

Any of those themes, or others, stand out as the best or most interesting? Any feel a bit flat? My one concern is that there is perhaps too much nostalgia.

Nick

Finished Sunday night. It is beautiful- I am curious to know what people thought of the ending- of moon's discovery.

And I have some bad news to report. It doesn't seem that the movie is available on Netflix. This one and The Pumpkin Eater: I'm seriously losing faith in Netflix.

Nick

That's a shame. I just finished the book, and have that feeling that you sometimes have when you've seen a well rendered film version of a novel--that you've already read it. Oddly, I did not remember that Kenneth Branagh played Moon, though I'm pretty sure that at that point in their respective careers, it was Branagh rather than Firth who would have drawn the crowds.

i just searched Amazon instant video and they don't seem to have it, either. So Netflix doesn't have it on disc?
i don't seem to be able to search without signing in and i don't have an account right now.

I looked on amazon and there is a DVD available, but it looks like it is out of print and only available used.

It's on Amazon US for 19.99 as a DVD-R. (New)

I saw the same thing, Guy. Might be well to splurge.

The funny thing about reading this was that Carr at least originally intended it to be elegaic in tone, and it worked for me--I found myself thinking back nostalgically to the young Kenneth Branagh and the young Colin Firth. It's as if they became part of that magical summer moment too.

I seem to be in a minority here because I would prefer not to see the film mainly because, for me, Natasha Richardson is not even close to how I imagine Alice Keach (the same goes for her mother as Mrs Dalloway). Anyhow, regarding the book, I found it a huge pleasure to read and if it had a soundtrack I think it might be this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_f4Xi... (Finzi too was greatly affected by the war). Wistful, elegiac and yes, of course, a little nostalgic. But why shouldn't it have been? He tells us nothing of his later life, but it can't have been good, not if he was going to depend on Vinny for love and solace. That moment in the loft with Alice brought my breathing to a halt. How could he not return to thinking of all that might have been? The book also brought verse XL of Houseman's 'Shropshire Lad' to mind:


"Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again".

The Shropshire Lad is apt. The music seems a little more somber than I took the book to be, but that's a matter of interpretation, I think. I think there's a chance that Carr's understatement about the hardship's of the main characters' lives may be read more lightly at one time and more tragically at another. He doesn't tend to dwell on things long after he points them out.

I am not pushing for you to see the movie, but I can't unsee it, so am glad they did do a good job with it.

Declan wrote: "I seem to be in a minority here because I would prefer not to see the film mainly because, for me, Natasha Richardson is not even close to how I imagine Alice Keach (the same goes for her mother as..."

That is beautiful, and perfect when contemplating A Month in the Country.

I am reading Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree, which Carr mentions in his introduction as the work he was trying to emulate. I found quite a bit Hardy-esque in the novel; not so much the hopelessness that Hardy evinces but the descriptions of pastoral life, the way that Carr has of evoking the coolness of a stone, the warmth of the sun when working in a field.

Listening to the Finzi music and reading the Housman (and not seeing the movie) reminds me of the mural in the church. There is, I think, both a sense that art is culture—meaning it is shared by those who live with it, see it, are moved by it, etc.—but also that it is an individuals creation who can change the cultural forms—like the mysterious painter does by inserting himself into the mural. Film adaptations of books could, perhaps, be said to do the same thing.

Did anyone else have an idea on why Carr wanted to make Birkin a restorer? And what the point of the mural was? I'm assuming that choice of apocalypse as subject was a metaphor for WWI. And the intro talks about how Carr himself spent a lot of time and effort saving old English churches and their religious artwork. But did anyone else have thoughts about it?

Nick

New York Review Books wrote: "Listening to the Finzi music and reading the Housman (and not seeing the movie) reminds me of the mural in the church. There is, I think, both a sense that art is culture—meaning it is shared by th..."

Michael Holryod says in the introduction that AMITC is a novel of resurrection. I would temper that and say that is is a novel of rehabilitation - or restoration to a previous state:

- Physical rehabilitation: Tom's twitch slowly fades as the novel progresses. Moon comments at the end of the novel that it is nearly gone

- Artisitic restoration or rehabilitation of the mural itself, which is covered in years of grime and paint

- 'Rehabilitation' in the religious sense: rehabilitation being the word for the posthumous restoration of an excommunicant (Moon's man in the field)

Really want to add more, but am at work and must get back to it . . .

Kate, I think you're right. Rehabilitation or restoration would be more apt. Partly because it is a more humble aim, and requires patient focussed work, not miracles. It is by submitting himself to both the process and the community that Birkin finds himself somewhat restored.

The community aspect is one reason I think it was wise for Carr to leave Birkin's love for Alice unfulfilled. It would be hard not to read it as a betrayal of the welcome the community had given him. That said, I am not quite sure what we are supposed to make of the empty house. Have the Keachs fled permanently? Or are they just making themselves scarce till Birkin goes? Or is there any intent on their side at all?

And I agree with Don that there is a marvelous texture added by all the unfamiliar words.

Loving this discussion. I think the point coming across is something like this: there are many disappointments or loses or mistakes in life but they are part of the history that makes a person who s/he is. And it's impossible to value this as good/bad. Although it does seem that some moments are more powerful than others, and this summer in Birkin's life is very important to him, no matter what happened the rest of his life. This kind of reading reminds me of Proust, which has a lot of that in it. But I still worry that it might lead to a risk of accepting things one shouldn't, the old "difficulties make one stronger" and "bad things might happen but they help you in the end." Perhaps people should resist. I can't help but feel that Birkin should have taken Alice and said to hell with everything else. Though I guess his last visit to the empty house was the opportunity and he missed his chance in the church.

And on the art theme, did anyone see this article floating around about an amateur restorer who destroyed a Spanish church masterpiece? http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/23/...
Birkin would be furious. And I totally agree with Kate's restoration/rehabilitation reading. Perhaps not just for individuals—though nobody really sins too bad in this book—but also for a society coming out of an awful and destructive war.

Nick

One of my friends just made that 'restored' painting their profile picture on Facebook and I couldn't figure out what is was and now am heartbroken. I can't help but think that there must be a really good art forger out there who could do a good bit and fix the painting for real . . .

One thing I was thinking about recently was the strange way that memory and trauma work in this book. On one hand there is the very real trauma with physical symptoms caused by the war on Birkin. On the other is how the memory of this summer in Oxgodby changes the later Birkin. Very different memories, but both are meant to be powerful.

Thoughts?

Nick

I feel that all hardens back to the rehabilitation and healing theme. Like the scars from physical wounds are not a product of the wound itself, but a product of the healing process, so Birkin's memory is the scar of his mental wounds received during the war- that mark on his mind that something awful happened here, and now is healed.

That's very nicely expressed Kate. I think that it is often the case that a difficult subject is best dealt with obliquely instead of directly. I felt that the silence of the church and the patient nature of his work combined to allow Birkin to finally loosen his body and mind; to rub away the accretions of pain and reveal other layers of his mysterious self.

Poor Emily. She gets an 'S' for sick stamped in her Sunday school star-card and might soon have enough to claim a prize. She mentions having liked a book called 'The Forgotten Garden', an actual book, written by Caroline Repchuck which is described as being:

"A poignant tale of an elderly man’s return to his childhood home where his father had created unusual topiary figures many years before. Overgrowth and neglect threaten the once-thriving formal garden. As the man busies himself with the task of reinstating the grounds to their former beauty, he is transported back in time. Through happy memories of his father’s garden, he capably transforms the unkempt bushes into copies of the original statuaries and clears the fountains. Real critters roam freely across the estate; some make it their home. So like Birkin"

So, although her death is, as you say, given only a brief mention, her presence in the novel is important and her death echoes all the other deaths - most of them implied - that are central to the recent experiences of Birkin and Moon, and to their thinking as they reach back to the past through their work.

i'm really enjoying this discussion. i don't really have anything to add, but all of your thoughts and perceptions are definitely adding to my appreciation of the book, which i thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Brs36 wrote: "Why did we get Birkin's memory of a month in the country and not his narrative about the horrors of war?"


Hi, so sorry to be entering the discussion in the last hour. I had hoped to reread the book, but then never got the chance so I'll go by memory and bits of my review.

In regard to his time spent in the war, there is one point in the story where Birkin states that he wanted a new beginning, "...to forget what the war had done to me…and begin where I'd left off. " It was a time of shedding the past and moving forward and as Kate so wonderfully stated, it went back to the themes of restoration.

One thing that I continue to question are Alice's motives -- was she falling in love or was she simply trying to escape her current situation. I wondered if she was trying to provoke jealousy in her husband, hoping to be taken away which would explain their sudden exit.

Hi Mikki, Delighted to see that you're here. That's a very interesting question. I expect that at the start Birkin's presence in the church is simply a matter of curiosity for Alice, a diversion from routine life, but I think she does begin to like him. This ought to lead to a lot of conflict within herself and perhaps it is something she can't quite resolve, leaving open the possibility that Birkin might take the initiative, and change both their lives, or as you say, provoke a reaction in her husband to blast away the inertia the encloses them, and then...who knows? It is a wonderfully curious and ambiguous scene as Birkin rings the bell repeatedly on a house he knows is empty. A novel that settled such questions would not be half as good.

Yes and with Birkin himself, who though not a religious man would probably feel guilty about taking away someone's wife, even if he found the husband very unpleasant and undeserving.

And a question: At one point the book suggests that church artist was probably disgraced and banished (evidence: not buried in the right spot). But then the ending has the discovery that he was a Muslim. I'm not sure if I really understand it.

Nick

Declan wrote: "It is a wonderfully curious and ambiguous scene as Birkin rings the bell repeatedly on a house he knows is empty. A novel that settled such questions would not be half as good."

I agree -- it's all of those unanswered questions and 'what-ifs" that create a sense of lingering in the reader's mind, and perhaps Birkin's as well as he thinks back to the closing of the gate.

Like you, I was also greatly moved by the scene with Birkin and Alice in the loft. Such subtle language that evoked so much emotion.

I don't have a lot more to add, but just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed it as you all have peeled away the layers of this book. You've been restorationists yourselves!

Shall we then choose another book to read? If so, I'll start a discussion thread where we can name some books for a poll.

Nick

New York Review Books wrote: "Shall we then choose another book to read? If so, I'll start a discussion thread where we can name some books for a poll.

Nick"

Sounds good to me!

Kate wrote: "New York Review Books wrote: "Shall we then choose another book to read? If so, I'll start a discussion thread where we can name some books for a poll.

Nick"

Sounds good to me!"

Yep!