'One of the best books I've ever read' Richard Osman
'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
Unlike anything else in modern English Literature.
— The 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.
— The New Yorker
It’s perfect, and sometimes I think I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering how it’s done.
—Sarah Perry, The Times Literary Supplement
Amazingly beautiful: so perfect, so exquisite! …The nuance and small moments that make up this gorgeous little novella are breathtaking, and the quiet, spare story will completely invade you. Brilliant!
—Dianah H, Powell’s City of Books blog
Carr has the magic touch to re-enter the imagined past.
— Penelope Fitzgerald
The work is virtually perfect, and written with a great deal of liveliness and wit.
—Michael Wood
A unique and special experience, a visit to a special time and place, deeply observed and portrayed in beautiful prose.
— The Washington Post
Carr’s prose is spare, elegant and buoyed with wit; the idyllic countryside and its inhabitants are rendered in affectionate detail.
— Publisher’s Weekly
A Month in the Country...is one of those perfect, precious novels that you want to loan to friends, buy all your relatives for Christmas and give to your latest paramour.
— Eve Claxton, Time Out New York
