36 years after it was written, the novel by English author Joseph Lloyd Carr has been translated into German. A book review.
36 years after it was written, the novel by English author Joseph Lloyd Carr has been translated into German. A book review.
The well-hewn stones are bonded with a touch of mortar, the gutters are in order, the first-person narrator states right at the beginning of Joseph Lloyd Carr’s novel “A Month in the Country”. Anyone who measures the value of a church by these criteria must be a restorer – that much is quickly clear.
There are not many novels in which a restorer is the main character. That’s why it’s all the better that this one has now been translated from English into German – 36 years after it was written. It is surprising that this has only happened now, as Carr’s novel was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1980. It was also made into a film shortly after it was published.
After a few hours of reading – the novel is only 150 pages long – it has to be said that it is a stroke of luck that “A Month in the Country” has finally been translated into German. For Carr’s novel is not just a description of a wonderful summer spent in the countryside by 20-year-old Tom Birkin, a war returnee who is uninjured but plagued by nervous facial twitches and terrible memories. It is a novel about a restorer who not only finds work but also peace and friends through his work on a mural in the village church of the fictional English village of Oxgodby.
Carr, who was born in Yorkshire in 1912 and died of leukemia in 1994, succeeds wonderfully in interweaving the mood of a glorious summer with the slow uncovering of a mural. The small digressions into medieval painting techniques, color production, art appreciation and descriptions of the craft of restoration are so cleverly inserted that they are neither instructive nor banal.
Only the fact that the uncovered painting shows the Last Judgement with the fall from hell and the promise of heaven is a little too striking. As is the story of a possible but unacknowledged love that develops between the restorer and the vicar’s wife. But in the end, it is all part and parcel of this summer, of which it says at the beginning: “And then, so help me God, in those first minutes of my first morning in Oxgodby, I was overcome by the feeling that this northern region was not hostile to me at all, but well-disposed, that my life had taken a decisive turn and that this summer of 1920, which was indeed to remain so radiant until the first leaves fell, would bring me a happy, blessed time.”
This light sound of the text, which overcomes all heaviness, has great enchanting potential. In such a light, summery, almost carefree mood, the slow emergence of the mural becomes a symbol of the young restorer’s search for his own life: The more Birkin uncovers of the painting, the more he comes back to life, to love, to peace and joy. The fact that the restorer’s craft and his enthusiasm for art help him to do this is the realization at the end of a small, touching novel that goes far beyond the summer of 1920.
Joseph Lloyd Carr “A Month in the Country”, 158 p., Dumont Verlag, 18 euros.
