A Month in the Country

This little book carried such a reputation—as one of those exquisite literary gems whose compact perfection is a miracle of tone and concision—that for a long time I didn't want to actually read it and risk breaking its spell. No danger of that, it turns out: the spell is only stronger when you've finished. The story: a young man, fresh from the horrors of the WWI trenches, is hired to restore a medieval mural in a Yorkshire village church. He works, slowly uncovering a masterpiece; he naps, he eats his lunch of bread and Wensleydale in the sun, he meets the townspeople, he falls in love. And then, summer over and painting restored, he takes his leave, and decades later he tells this small, sweet tale with such vivid intensity that you can hardly believe that this vision of the aftermath of the Great War could have been published in the distant year of 1980.