A Month in the Country -- J. L. Carr
Finished A Month in the Country which was not what I had expected it to be, but good just the same. Apparently it was made into a movie during the 80's starring Colin Firth, which is sort of difficult to imagine. Not much to say about it, really, but I do like this part an awful lot:
We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever -- the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on the belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.
But this was something I knew nothing of as I lifted the loop and set off across the meadow.
We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever -- the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on the belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.
But this was something I knew nothing of as I lifted the loop and set off across the meadow.