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In the clay the holes of hands
The small clay sea-thing is below the cut.
Anterior view.
Posterior.
I said it had tube feet.
Maybe it's a sea-pangolin. I really need to dust my shelves.
A Month in the Country (1980) by J.L. Carr is a small, strange, and beautiful book. I discovered it in McIntyre and Moore's in December and never got around to describing it before the holidays hit. In the summer of 1920, Tom Birkin arrives in the small village of Oxgodby, Yorkshire, to restore what might be a medieval mural newly discovered in the nearby church. He brings with him a secondhand overcoat, a change of clothes in a straw fish-bass, a nervous twitch and stammer, and a bad case of depression; the substance of the novella is what he leaves with. There is another young veteran, similarly employed to find out a fourteenth-century ancestor's grave. There is a stationmaster-preacher whose daughter brashes her way into watching him work. The reverend is standoffish of scholar-soldiers, but his wife looks like Botticelli's Primavera. And under Tom's hands as they recover their skill with whitewash and red ochre, the past—not the recent years of failed marriage and Passchendaele, but the unknowable era of a man who could paint hell and Christ like they were things that could be touched—seems to lie so close, it too might be within reach, like a woman's face under a straw hat, among limestone and roses. There are very few novels that feel like poems, but this is one of them. It is not a cross between A Canterbury Tale and A.E. Housman, either, but it shares some of their summer country and lost, remembered hills. And its discussions of stonemasonry and medieval painting are brisk and technical. I have no idea what else J.L. Carr wrote, but I'm not sure I care; A Month in the Country is perfect.
Anterior view.
Posterior.
I said it had tube feet.
Maybe it's a sea-pangolin. I really need to dust my shelves.
A Month in the Country (1980) by J.L. Carr is a small, strange, and beautiful book. I discovered it in McIntyre and Moore's in December and never got around to describing it before the holidays hit. In the summer of 1920, Tom Birkin arrives in the small village of Oxgodby, Yorkshire, to restore what might be a medieval mural newly discovered in the nearby church. He brings with him a secondhand overcoat, a change of clothes in a straw fish-bass, a nervous twitch and stammer, and a bad case of depression; the substance of the novella is what he leaves with. There is another young veteran, similarly employed to find out a fourteenth-century ancestor's grave. There is a stationmaster-preacher whose daughter brashes her way into watching him work. The reverend is standoffish of scholar-soldiers, but his wife looks like Botticelli's Primavera. And under Tom's hands as they recover their skill with whitewash and red ochre, the past—not the recent years of failed marriage and Passchendaele, but the unknowable era of a man who could paint hell and Christ like they were things that could be touched—seems to lie so close, it too might be within reach, like a woman's face under a straw hat, among limestone and roses. There are very few novels that feel like poems, but this is one of them. It is not a cross between A Canterbury Tale and A.E. Housman, either, but it shares some of their summer country and lost, remembered hills. And its discussions of stonemasonry and medieval painting are brisk and technical. I have no idea what else J.L. Carr wrote, but I'm not sure I care; A Month in the Country is perfect.
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A Month in the Country seems lovely. "Brashes her way"--I like that.
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That book sounds extraordinary, which has a lot to do with the evocative way you describe it. :-)
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It clicked with me, but I am not the only person who thought so; it won the Guardian Fiction Prize when it came out, and the edition I picked up is from the New York Review of Books.
(Also it seems to have been made into a movie with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth, but that's just weird.)
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Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth are both very good actors. A Month in the Country just isn't a book I would have looked at and thought, "You know what this needs? A movie version . . ."
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Hm,. But then why the appearance of scales?
A Month in the Country seems lovely.
I think you would like it. A lot of it is about land and time and moments either honored or lost.
Next Sunday, she wasn't in church and I couldn't face Moon, chapel, or the Ellerbecks, so I set off across the fields, not following paths, but through gaps and over walls, towards the west.I'd never been that way before. There was warmth and ripeness in the air. Autumn was burning across the Vale, the beeches flaring like torches as the heat mist ebbed away from hedges and spinneys and from flocks grazing along the slopes of the faded fields. Yet, unwilling as I was to acknowledge it, I knew now that this landscape was fixed only momentarily. The marvelous weather was nearing its end.
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I thought of those as tufts of wet fur.
--I love this excerpt you shared! Thank you! Okay, I will definitely add it to my to-read list.
seal image
(or--the fur pattern on the little one here? http://www.seallife.info/imageFiles/harbourSealAggressiveBehaviour.gif)
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I had never heard of it or J.L. Carr; I picked it up because it was completely unfamiliar and had an imprint I recognized on the spine. I'm incredibly glad I did. If you ever re-read it, I would be curious to hear your reactions. Your thoughts on books and music are very good.
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Thank you!
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A Month in the Country is on my stack.
Nine
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It really is.
A Month in the Country is on my stack.
I hope you enjoy it! If nothing else, you should like the countryside and the art history.
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I shall tell my father you approve!
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Do I see coins in the little mylar-cardboard things there? Brings back memories, that.
The book sounds fascinating. I'll have an eye out for it.
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You do. They were given to me by members of
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Good on them!
You can guess what novel by Robert Graves I imprinted on in high school.
Yes. I'd had a slight suspicion of that, already.
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I'm going to have to read them all, then.
His own Quince Tree Press used to publish teeny-tiny books, pocket-sized gems with two prices, one for adults and one for kids.
That's wonderful.
There's a biography by Byron Rogers, "The Last Englishman", which gives a fair picture of the man.
Thank you! Was he someone you knew?
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I'm really glad you had the chance!
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I know! My father clearly needs to spend more time with clay . . .
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I'll tell my father!
I agree about the seal--it's those eyes!
Hmm.