In J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country,
narrator Tom Birkin looks back many decades to the summer of 1920,
which began for him with his spirit shattered. His wife had run off
with another man, and World War I battlefields still haunted his mind.
Tom, a Londoner trained as an art restorationist, had his first
independent commission that summer. As a result of a provision in a
will, he was hired to recover a painted-over 500-year-old wall mural in
a church in the north of England. The church was his home and
workplace; he slept in the belfry and spent his days on a scaffold in
the chancel. As Tom gradually uncovered a masterpiece depicting a
biblical judgment scene, he felt an exciting connection across the
centuries with the anonymous artist.
Village residents pulled Tom back into human fellowship. His first and
regular companion was another outsider and veteran who was hired as a
result of the same benefactor's will to find her ancestor's grave. Tom
also had intriguing conversations with the vicar's wife, with whom he
secretly fell in love. Villagers gave him food and invited him to their
homes.
Tom was a changed man as his sojourn ended even though there were no
dramatic turning points in his story. The country people; picturesque
rural England in summer weather; work that engrossed him; and "not
having to worry my head with anything but uncovering their wall
painting" produced a transformation. "The anxious time was over; I was
in calm water now," Tom recalls feeling.
But he is also a wise old man as he writes his memories. Would he have
been happy if he'd stayed? Happiness cannot be locked in, he says:
"People move away, grow older, die . . . It is now or never; we must
snatch at happiness as it flies."
Written in spare, elegant prose, A
Month in the Country is deeper than its 111 pages and
uneventful plot might suggest. It offers a meditation on the thought
that the best route to change is not to look for it. Tom didn't
actively seek escape or rescue; he went to the country to do a job.
It's the countryside, art, other people, and an engaging project that
were the active players in restoring Tom's spirit. His contribution was
simply to be receptive.
.
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