A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

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When the protagonist is tasked to restore a 500-year-old painting which have been white-washed over a hundred years after it was painted, he leaves behind a shattered life in London. He survived WWI but his wife left him for another man. He had little else to lose when he left for the northern village where the church is located. While cleaning up the painting, he intensely experiences the joy and sorrows of the original artist, as though they were communicating across the centuries, even discovering how the unknown master died so many centuries ago. And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart—knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. ” That this is, nevertheless, a hopeful book, regardless of regrets, is a huge tribute to the author. Birkin is not the only outsider. There’s the grumpy vicar, Keach (who resents the disruption caused by the restoration), his very young and beautiful wife, Alice, and finally, Charles Moon. All four are 30 or younger, though Keach in particular seems older.

J.L. Carr's novella explores such perfect times, through the character of Tom Birkin. Set in the summer of 1920, but related in 1978, an older Birkin is remembering the month during which he is hired to uncover a medieval mural in a church in northern England. Damaged by time served in WWI and a bad marriage, Birkin arrives at Oxgodby fairly shattered and alone. This time serves as a salve on his heart, a reminder of the beauty of art, but also of nature, of simple pastoral idyls and country people. As he uncovers the painting, he is also uncovering the masterpiece of his self, his wonder at the world and whatever lies ahead. Tom’s friendship with Charles Moon (another veteran hired to uncover a lost grave on the premises), was ‘guy-bonding-enduring’. But oddly, what happened 'outside' was like a dream. It was inside the still church, before its reappearing picture, that was 'real'. I drifted across the rest. As I have said – like a dream. For a time. The copy I obtained has a compelling Introduction from Penelope Fitzgerald, who, during her lifetime, was one of the most distinctive and eloquent voices in contemporary British fiction. She describes Carr (1912-1994) as someone who “always dwelt lovingly […] on details of behaviour that separate one region of England from another.” She saw that while he was “by no means a lavish writer,” he did have the “magic touch” when it came to revisiting “the imagined past.”Or is it a condition we only perceive in retrospection remembering the past through the rose-tinted glasses of memory? We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever — the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

A single immense piece of furniture like an internal buttress. In any ordinary room it would have been grotesque but, here, it fell into perfect scale. I’ve no idea what it was. It could have been a Baroque altar-piece, an oriental throne, a gigantic examination exercise performed by a cabinet-maker’s apprentice.” I was drawn into the changing picture of Oxgodby itself. But, oddly, what happened outside was like a dream. It was inside the still church, before its reappearing picture, that was real. I drifted across the rest. As I have said – like a dream. For a time.” All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen. He and Moon are a very different pair (not a couple): both are ex-army, spending the summer funded by a bequest from Miss Hebron (in Moon’s case, he has to find the missing grave of an ancestor). But Moon lives in a hole, while Birkin lives up a ladder in the belfry.

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. Well, we live by hope. Tom has just returned to England after a horrific experience as a soldier in WWI. He is a broken man; a man with a facial tic caused by the trauma of war. He is returning from hell, probably suffering from what now would be called PTSD. Perhaps a commission to restore a medieval mural in a country church will help him return to civilian life and give him direction. A haunting novel about art and its power to heal, J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.