J. L. Carr (1912–1994)

Really beautiful novella. The main part of it is a nostalgic English pastoral exploration, a romantic vision of the countryside and rural living that probably never existed and yet is beautiful to read about anyway. And yet it's saved from being pure saccharine by the constant reminders that even from the perspective of the narrator, looking back on what he sees as the best days of his life, the exclusion and expulsion from that life, the ways people are separated from the normal flow of society and belonging, is always close at hand. He takes lodgings in the bell tower and his work is done on a scaffold that only another outsider is allowed on. The other outsider is working to find a grave of the local landed family's ancestor who was denied a true Christian burial. The vicar's family is frozen out by the community. The day trip of the Methodist chapel which blocks the Anglicans from going with. The impossible gap in understanding between the present day and the painter of the church mural. The gaps between the war, 1920, the present day of the 1970s. The divides keep stacking up, self inflicted or forced by failure to fit in with community standards Moon the archaeologist is gay, and the narrator being told this puts distance between the two. The 14th century ancestor had converted to Islam. The girl with consumption dies with no fanfare. The narrator can't stay in the village because he's actually married but can't tell them

So when he looks back you see, not that the pastoral ideal was false, exactly, and not even that there's "dark secrets" or something like that - it's that it's something that you can only experience as an ideal when you're there for a month. All the cracks can be glossed over but everything would fall apart if you stayed there too long. And when you look back maybe you can't think of why you didn't stay but that's what distance does - you can't experience the full thing in your memories or through a writing or art. But there's always something you carry with you.… (lisätietoja)