A Month in the Country

"It’s a wonderful book. And it was made into a very good film starring Colin Firth. So in this novella, the narrator, Birkin is looking back over many years to the summer of 1920, when he has just been discharged from the army after the First World War. He travels to Yorkshire where he has been hired to uncover a mural, which has been painted over in the church of Oxgodby. He’s obviously suffering from the effects of war. He has a facial twitch and a stammer. He works in the church, sleeps in the bell chamber, and meets a man called Moon, who has been hired to search for a particular grave. Birkin is only meant to be there for a month, but the work takes longer than he thought, all summer. There he is uncovering pictures of suffering which are clearly an allegory for what he has been going through. Apparently, the novella is quite autobiographical. Carr was born in Yorkshire, and it does often feel as though Carr is speaking through Birkin, but it’s still a very subtle and understated work. Overlaying the whole book is a feeling of deep nostalgia and regret. I’m sure all novelists must use aspects of their own lives. Even those writing science fiction set on a different world, a different planet will still be writing about relationships, about society. Writers might use memories that they change completely so that the people involved wouldn’t recognise themselves, but we’re all drawing to some extent on what we know, what has happened to us, or what we’ve learned from other people. Even if, when writing a character from different gender or race than your own, you’re still using elements of what’s happened in your own life, the way I think Carr does in A Month in the Country. I think everything that has happened in an author’s life gets composted and may be used again."