A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
J L Carr
IN THE SUMMER of 1920, a shell-shocked war veteran comes with a battered greatcoat and an old bag to a small church deep in the English Yorkshire country. There, news of world events is scarce, and whole villages meet for Sunday picnics. He has been hired to restore a "Doom" painting of Christ's last judgment, concealed for hundred of years on the church wall.
He is deeply scarred by grief and the horror of his experiences in the trenches, but as the summer moves on, he becomes a part of the local life; a young married woman warily -- and playfully -- draws him out of his isolation. He relaxes into the slow and comforting rhythms of the English countryside. The month in the country becomes a glorious summer.
-- from the publisher's blurb, The Folio Society.
A deeply personal and an intimate story of life and healing. -- Francis Chin
EXCERPTS
[Page numbering of the excerpts is from the Folio edition]
Summer's ripeness
There was so much time, that marvellous summer. Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the Plain. It was a sort of stage magic -- "Now you don't see; indeed, there is nothing to see. Now look!" Day after day it was like that and each morning I leaned on the yard gate dragging at my first fag and (I'd like to think) marvelling at this splendid backcloth. But it can't have been so; I'm not the marvelling kind. Or was I then? But one thing is sure -- I had a feeling of immense content and, if I thought at all, it was that I'd like this to go on and on, no one going, no one coming, autumn and winter always loitering around the corner, summer's ripeness lasting for ever, nothing disturbing the even tenor of my way (as I think someone may have said before me). -- p 62
