A Month in the Country
  • Published: 22 August 2000
  • ISBN: 9780141182308
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $19.99

A Month in the Country

Formats & editions
Paperback
22 Oct 2014
EBook
3 Oct 2013
Paperback
22 Aug 2000
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A sensitive portrayal of the healing process that took place in the aftermath of the First World War, J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country includes an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald, author of Offshore, in Penguin Modern Classics.

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.

Adapted into a 1987 film starring Colin Firth, Natasha Richardson and Kenneth Branagh, A Month in the Country traces the slow revival of the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.
  • Published: 22 August 2000
  • ISBN: 9780141182308
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $19.99
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Praise for A Month in the Country

The book I keep coming back to, it's one of the best books I've ever read. I've never met anyone who didn't love it.

Richard Osman

Tender and elegant

Guardian

Unlike anything else in modern English Literature

D.J. Taylor, Spectator

Carr's blessedly small tale of lost love is also a small hymn about art and the compensating joy of the artist, both in giving and receiving. It stays with us, too, and is oddly haunting

New Yorker

Carr has the magic touch to re-enter the imagined past

Penelope Fitzgerald