![]() ![]() ![]() 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. ![]() And I never returned, ever wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. All is drawn together by the perfectly-achieved first person perspective as Birkin settles into Oxgodby, finding a contentment that is all the deeper for its inevitable transience:Īll this happened so long ago. Bookended by the conclusion of one journey as Tom Birkin stumbles out of his train onto the Oxgodby station platform and the start of another as he closes the church gate and sets off to go back to that station, the story lets out its treasures effortlessly. I reread the book again after many years, and it truly stands up to re-reading. It is about trauma, community, friendship, the countryside, time, the pleasures of work, simplicity, memory, England, architecture, art, archaeology (of various sorts) and, yes, love. A Month is definitely small (just 85 pages in the Penguin Classics edition) but one of the marvels of this narrative is how, somehow, it still contains multitudes. The definition, like the book, is seriously understated. Carr’s 1980 nove l A Month in the Country. A novel - a small tale generally of love.ĭr Johnson’s definition is the first epigraph to J.L. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |