A Month in the Country

A Month in the Country

J. L. Carr

#2478 of 8,085 books · #366 in Historical Fiction

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize (1980).

A damaged survivor of the First World War, Tom Birkin finds refuge in the quiet village church of Oxgodby where he is to spend the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting. Immersed in the peace and beauty of the countryside and the unchanging rhythms of village life he experiences a sense of renewal and belief in the future. Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place of blissful calm, untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years. A Month in the Country traces the slow revival of the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.