A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr - Goodreads.
A Month in the Country is a movie of morsel-sized pleasures, yet there's a sizable joy to be had in catching Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh at the start of their long and impressive careers.
J. L. Carr, in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY (a beautiful title) his little gem of a near-perfect novel that is only 135 pages long, accomplishes what many writers never achieve in massive novels that go on for hundreds of pages. He creates characters fully realized with personalities that we recognize, gives us a plot with at least two surprises.
The culture of confession has given rise to novels that begin with an unspeakable act (graphically described) and end in redemption (this part is usually more vague). That's not how it works in J.L. Carr's quiet, brief, dreamy A Month in the Country. Writing in 1978, Carr's narrator, Tom Birkin, recalls the summer of 1920.
Biography. Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, Deane was brought up as part of a Catholic nationalist family. He attended St. Columb's College in Derry, where he befriended fellow-student Seamus Heaney.He then attended Queen's University Belfast (BA and MA) and Pembroke College, Cambridge (PhD). Until 1993, he was Professor of Modern English and American Literature at University College Dublin.
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr by Backlisted Podcast published on 2015-11-28T10:47:52Z in the first episode of a new podcast about books, John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by novelist Lissa Evans and Unbound's Mathew Clayton discuss JL Carr's 'A Month in the Country'.
Anne Michaels (born 15 April 1958) is a Canadian poet and novelist whose work has been translated and published in over 45 countries. Her books have garnered dozens of international awards including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship.
This too will be a book to reread and ponder. I was especially taken with the final essays, particularly her thoughts connecting JL Carr’s A Month in The Country (a favorite of mine) and Pat Barker’s Regeneration, and the chapter on Jude the Obscure. Full disclosure: longtime, big Gornick fan.