Another new gimmick! I mean, carefully considered new feature.
A Month In The Country by JL Carr is one of my all-time favourite books. It's a deceptively simple tale of a young man, damaged by his experiences in WWI, who spends a month in a village repairing a church fresco and, in so doing, himself. The problem with that description is that it sounds (a) worthy and (b) dull, which it (a) isn't and (b) isn't. It's charming and intelligent and surprisingly funny, it moves quietly but packs unexpected emotional punch, and it's altogether rather lovely. I am yet to recommend it to someone who hasn't loved it; my best success was with my aunt, who enjoyed it so much she immediately bought three more copies for friends. It was nominated for the Booker prize in 1980 (and lost to a William Golding novel about boats - yawn - she says unfairly, not having read it - but seriously, boats) and was made into a film in 1987 with a young Colin Firth and a young Kenneth Branagh which, you will not be surprised to hear me say, is good, but not as good as the book. (Do you notice a theme in recent posts?) It is also pleasingly short.
So pleasingly short, in fact, that the Penguin Modern Classics edition is the perfect width for propping up the wobbly leg of my ironing board. You can't do that with a Kindle. Well, you can, but it probably invalidates the warantee.
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4 comments:
I once put together some Ikea furniture, and not having a hammer to hand, used a copy of Gore Vidal's 'Lincoln'. Very effective...
You use an ironing board?????
Not often enough to have missed access to 'A Month In The Country'.
Ha. I sometimes put mine up, look at it, never get round to the big pile of ironing sitting next to it, fold the clothes away and put the ironing board back. Now I know that somewhere in that process I can also prop it up with a good book. Excellent.
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