A Month in the Country
A Month in the Country is J. L. Carr's 1980 novella, shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year and now widely considered one of the great short English novels of the twentieth century. Tom Birkin, a young husband whose first marriage is already collapsing and who carries a Western Front facial twitch and an inherited Methodist sense of obligation, accepts a small commission in the summer of 1920: he is to uncover and restore a medieval wall painting that has been covered over with limewash since the Reformation in the church of the small Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. Sleeping in the bell tower and eating mostly bread and cheese, he spends a long, warm summer up on his scaffolding, slowly recovering judgment, balance, and joy. He befriends the archaeologist Charles Moon, who is digging for a long-lost grave in the field next to the church, and falls a little in love with the vicar's wife, Alice Keach. Carr's prose is short, restrained, and quietly elegiac, looking back from the perspective of an elderly Tom on what he remembers as the happiest few weeks of his life.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about A Month in the Country
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In the summer of 1920, a shell-shocked World War I veteran arrives in a small Yorkshire village to uncover a medieval church mural. The work and the people there slowly bring him back.
A Month in the Country was written by J.L. Carr and published in 1980. Carr was a British schoolmaster turned novelist, and this short novel is his best-known work.
Yes. A Month in the Country won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1980 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize the same year. It is widely cited as a perfect short novel of postwar English literature.
A Month in the Country is 111 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, A Month in the Country takes most readers about 2 hours to finish.
A Month in the Country is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
A Month in the Country is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.