J. L. Carr (1912–1994)

I was motivated to read this book (in this really rather nice edition) having seen North Country Theatre's travelling production of the play-of-the-book. The production follows the plots pretty closely, so no surprises there, nor in the prose itself. This quiet, low-key book follows our hero and WWI survivor Tom Birkin as he arrives in the small North Yorkshire village of Oxgodby to spend August restoring the long-covered-over wall paintings in the church.

The book is melancholy, nostalgic, recalling an era long gone, when farms were unmechanised and church and chapel were still central to the lives of many. It's a time of healing for Tom as he recovers from a failed marriage and shattering years in the trenches. We're subtly aware that this special time is a temporary idylll in a difficult life, and we too can bathe in the restorative peace and simple pleasures of the setting.

There are memorable characters: his friend the archaeologist Moon; the unsympathetic vicar and his sympathetic wife; the lay preacher-cum- station master and his family.

This is a gentle elegy to an English country summer, but the underlying suffering of the narrator prevents it descending into mere sentimentality. A rewarding read.… (mere)

Really beautiful novella. The main part of it is a nostalgic English pastoral exploration, a romantic vision of the countryside and rural living that probably never existed and yet is beautiful to read about anyway. And yet it's saved from being pure saccharine by the constant reminders that even from the perspective of the narrator, looking back on what he sees as the best days of his life, the exclusion and expulsion from that life, the ways people are separated from the normal flow of society and belonging, is always close at hand. He takes lodgings in the bell tower and his work is done on a scaffold that only another outsider is allowed on. The other outsider is working to find a grave of the local landed family's ancestor who was denied a true Christian burial. The vicar's family is frozen out by the community. The day trip of the Methodist chapel which blocks the Anglicans from going with. The impossible gap in understanding between the present day and the painter of the church mural. The gaps between the war, 1920, the present day of the 1970s. The divides keep stacking up, self inflicted or forced by failure to fit in with community standards Moon the archaeologist is gay, and the narrator being told this puts distance between the two. The 14th century ancestor had converted to Islam. The girl with consumption dies with no fanfare. The narrator can't stay in the village because he's actually married but can't tell them

So when he looks back you see, not that the pastoral ideal was false, exactly, and not even that there's "dark secrets" or something like that - it's that it's something that you can only experience as an ideal when you're there for a month. All the cracks can be glossed over but everything would fall apart if you stayed there too long. And when you look back maybe you can't think of why you didn't stay but that's what distance does - you can't experience the full thing in your memories or through a writing or art. But there's always something you carry with you.… (mere)