#jl carr

[ourfriendsthejays]

Books for November: Carr's Pocket Books.

This is one of CARR'S POCKET BOOKS a series of poets, writers, engravers, and dictionaries

These books hover between a greeting and a present. They fit a common envelope and go for minimum postage. In cold bedrooms only one hand to the wrist need suffer exposure. A distinguished novelist recommends them for reading in the bath. An ambassador, albeit American, claims they can be palmed from the cuff during tedious speeches & profitless sermons.

J.L. Carr, the originator, compiler & publisher of these Pocket Books did so in order to subsidise the writing of novels; the best known of which 'A Month in the Country' was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1980 and won the Guardian Fiction Prize.

His eight novels & more than 50 Pocket Books are available from:

The Quince Tree Press

www.quincetreepress.co.uk

2021

[wylfenne]

Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for har-vest. And being young.

If I'd stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvellous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.

- JL Carr

[julesofnature]

"The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late." ~ JL Carr

[movie--posters]

[thesquireinvictus]

“I never exchanged a word with the Colonel. He has no significance at all in what happened during my stay in Oxgodby. As far as I’m concerned he might just as well have gone round the corner and died. But that goes for most of us, doesn’t it? We look blankly at each other. Here I am, here you are. What are we doing here? What do you suppose it’s all about? Let’s dream on. Yes, that’s my Dad and Mum over there on the piano top. My eldest boy is on the mantelpiece. That cushion cover was embroidered by my cousin Sarah only a month before she passed on. I go to work at eight and come home at five-thirty. When I retire they’ll give me a clock – with my name engraved on the back. Now you know all about me. Go away: I’ve forgotten you already.” ― J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

[wylfenne]

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 a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, 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.

- JL Carr, A Month in the Country

[swartzmark]

J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country (1980)

[mohawkmind]

“There was so much time that marvelous summer.”

- JL Carr, A Month in the Country