A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

It hardly seems possible this was first written in 1978. It has the feel of a much older book, for Carr has entered the past and settled in there as though it were his. This belongs to that class of novels that wear their truths lightly: nearly every page describes a look, a feeling, a moment that we recognize no matter that the characters precede us by one hundred years.

Shortly after WWI, a returned soldier comes to an old church in the north of England with the intention of uncovering an old mural concealed beneath lime wash centuries before. It is slow work, and it is summer. He is not well paid. There is something to be said for penury. When one has little, one has no shield to wield off experience. When one is hungry, nearly everything tastes good.

J.L. Carr says, in his introduction that his original intention was to write a rural idyll and “I wanted its narrator to look back regretfully across forty or fifty years but, recalling a time irrecoverably lost, still feel a tug at the heart.” (Intro, xxi) The mural, the quiet, steady effort of the work, the townspeople, the vicar and the vicar’s wife, the weather: all these were “lying about in memory and employ[ed]… to suit one’s ends.”

Though slight in size (just over one hundred pages from start to finish), this novel carries with it the stories of all time. It carries it’s knowledge lightly, carelessly even, and will make this book relevant and enjoyable reading for years to come. Thank goodness for The New York Review of Books. They are saving classic literature from oblivion.


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The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

Paperback, 192 pages Published April 19th 2011 by Bellevue Literary Press (first published January 1st 2011) Original Title The Sojourn ISBN 1934137340 (ISBN13: 9781934137345)Literary AwardsJulia Ward Howe Prize Nominee (2012), Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction (2012), Chautauqua Prize (2012), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (2011)

This novel reminds me of a story a father might tell a son in long sections, by the fire of a remote cabin in the woods, perhaps over a period of years. It has no heights nor moments of extreme tension, but has a sort of inevitability to it, like a melody that sounds familiar but that we listen to with eyes wide and head canted to catch phrases that are new and put together in surprising ways.

The literature of World War I makes one a pacifist. Some of the best writing about that time forces upon one the futility of war. This is another to add to that canon. The use of language makes this novel special, as does the rich imagining of a young man’s life, and the angle: our narrator is a sharpshooter, a sniper, a marksman. The war looks different from a mountain hide and through the crosshairs of a precision scope, given that this work required hunting one’s target like an animal of prey. The best equipment and a gold braid inspire a degree of freedom and uncontested passage through forward lines. But the soul-destroying fact of the war just takes a little longer with these well-trained and disciplined boy soldiers.

The graceful arc of the story brings the reader full circle, through a life lived in the space of years. We feel older, too, when we close the book, and sit back to say simply, “it is done.” No pyrotechnics, just gorgeous language and solid storytelling. This is a man’s novel—it notices and mentions those things that men know and think and experience. Women will like it because it casts some light on a man and thoughts he wouldn’t ever articulate. It is Krivak’s first novel and it was published by the Bellevue Literary Press, which also published the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tinkers. From the publishers's website:

The aim of the Bellevue Literary Press is to produce original authoritative and literary works, both fiction and nonfiction, that focus on relationships to the human body, illness, health, and healing and range the intersection of the sciences and the arts.

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Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd

Lysander Reif, actor and hapless lover, is given brief speaking parts in Waiting… through the prop of a diary prepared for his Viennese psychoanalyst. Otherwise we watch in wonder (a laugh behind our smile) as this young British pawn in pre-WWI Vienna is turned this way and that in canny and knowing hands and is subjected to the voracious appetites of more mature personalities. Lysander, like the Shakespearean character of that name in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, experiences a magical twist in his affections from the tall, fair, svelte Blanche to the dark-haired and gamine Hettie while at the same time being “run” by British Intelligence.

Never boring and never entirely serious, Boyd’s novel allows us to enjoy romping good theatre: he portrays agonizingly real motivations and maneuvers which leave our hero momentarily on the defensive. But Lysander is nothing if not imaginative and resourceful, and he finds ways to sort through the complicated set of constraints he is handed, while at the same time mentally discarding or recategorizing the bits he doesn’t choose to remember.

Boyd’s writing is magic, for it is big fiction—big and complicated enough for one to want to get lost in for days. It is wry and funny and true enough. It is always a pleasure to have a new novel of his to look forward to—one never knows where he will lead. Certainly I never expected sexual dysfunction and the psychoanalyst’s couch, but that added to our attraction to the immensely-likeable Lysander, young innocent that he was, and wily interpreter of truth that he turned out to be.

I freely admit, however, that I am still not exactly sure if I "got" the final pieces of the book. I have a feeling I might have misinterpreted the final sleight of hand by our fine, and by this time, thoroughly grown-up Lysander. Boyd could have wiped the smile off our lips by hurting our main man, but he chose not to, and I thank him for that. But Lysander had borne the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and was far wiser than just by half.

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Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean

This is less the story of Rin Tin Tin (and his offspring) than of the man that owned him…and after that, of the men and women that sought to preserve the memory of him. I am a sucker for dog books, but since dogs don’t talk, one must be satisfied with stories of their owners. Just as Marley and Me was not so much the story of the dog than of John Grogan and his family, so Rin Tin Tin must be imagined through this book and the massive archive of film footage of him and his chosen successors.

What struck me from the century of history behind the name of Rin Tin Tin—the first dog with the name was born in 1918 in war-torn France—was how the first man to own him, Lee Duncan, never seemed to develop the same kind of love for any dog of the same name that followed. None had that unique set of qualities that so endeared Rinty to his owner in the first place. But a huge industry rose and fell on the tide of public opinion through the war years and after, carried on and on by men with more conviction than talent, more hubris than humility. When, many times, the rights to the Rin Tin Tin name could be passed on profitably to keep the flame alive, it was often sequestered and squandered, its value magnified to untenable proportions.

Susan Orlean must have wondered many times how she had gotten herself into this project. It required long, deep dives into the lives of obsessives, and it leaves one feeling slightly deranged and breathless to think that the story of that talented canine comes from the dark recesses of neglected warehouses and lives warped to fit the myth. I listened to the audio of this book, and I had to laugh at how many times I was sure the story was over—by her telling and the inflection in her voice--only to hear another section declaring itself on my mobile device. The name of Rinty was resurrected so many times under such improbable circumstances, that one simply has to credit the wild imaginations of the rights-holders, and one feels a little sorry that the original great Rinty is not alive to be celebrated.





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The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller

A schoolboy’s scarf, a hair clasp, and an old photograph are practically all that remain of a young soldier’s life when he returns to Britain after the First war. His family and his neighbors all suspect that even his sanity is lost. After Captain John Emmett’s apparent suicide, his younger sister contacts an old school chum, Laurence, to see if he can tell her why young Emmett had to die. The author, Elizabeth Speller, manages to evoke a period of time when life was different and yet familiar. She adds another important figure to the mix who feels as real as the triptych described above: Chas, another boyhood friend of Laurence, and an acquaintance of John’s. Chas is both explainer and finder of obscure links. He is indispensable, because shortly we discover that John’s death is not as it seems.

Based on several true stories of soldiers serving the British army in World War I, The Return of Captain John Emmett tells a tangled tale of love, murder, and revenge. Slow-paced and literate, this invokes all the pain and heartbreak of the time, introducing us to the lost men who returned from the trenches without the strength of spirit they’d gone with. What gave the novel its depth was the evocation of the poetry that was created at the time. I left needing to read again the lines penned by the broken men who survived the trenches, only to succumb to the peace.

Readers who relish the work of Charles Todd, and Jacqueline Winspear will find this a welcome new voice.




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