A Month in the Country

· Penguin UK
4.4
8 reviews
eBook
128
Pages
Eligible
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About this eBook

'Tender and elegant' Guardian
'Unlike anything else in modern English literature' D.J. Taylor, Spectator


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 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.

With an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald

Ratings and reviews

4.4
8 reviews
Stephen Kershaw
19 July 2016
An original story well told in first person. An excellent and balanced prose style, conversational in tone. An authentic love story set in an equally authentic North Yorkshire in 1920, portraying an agricultural setting and community depicting rural England shortly before later 20th century modernity overtakes it. Atmospheric, well paced story telling. Will read it again.
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About the author

James Lloyd Carr, born 1912, attended the village school at Carlton Miniott in the North Riding and Castleford Secondary School. He died in Northamptonshire in 1994. His novel A Month in the Country won the Guardian Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a memorable film.

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