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Actually the great American novel! A former lover suggested-- nay demanded-- that I read this and I feel eternally grateful. The most accessible and in my opinion, important Faulkner there is. The prose is so beautiful and rich, each page on its own is a joy to read. But the story, the STORY is wild and horrifying and wrenching in both the micro and macro. I read this last spring and wished that I had read it for the first time in the summer but in hindsight: this is a winter time book. It's made to be devoured slowly and introspectively. I wish there was a film adaptation.
Nov 30, 2023
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What a beautiful prose, wow! I don’t usually gravitate towards this type of writing to be honest, it sometimes feels like it’s trying too hard - but Daniel Woodrell really perfects it, painting a relentlessly cold and gritty atmosphere. The general story is of a family struggling to survive in their Ozark home, with an infamous crank-cookin dad who’s skipped bail — putting their home and land at risk of being seized. The characters are dispicible, the season is frigid, and the story is brief but immensely impactful.
Apr 5, 2022
I read this novella all in one sitting on the train to Bath, and I haven't been able to stop thing about it. Set in the 1920s, the main character is shellshocked WWI veteran who ventures into the British countryside to restore a mural in an old church. But it feels like more than an anti war novel, its about the end of summer, the passage of time and modernity, finding your place in a changing world. A Month in the Country is a celebration of brokenness — not the suffering of brokenness but, rather, the vulnerability that brokenness brings.
“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.”
Mar 18, 2025
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yeah, still rules!
Jan 22, 2024
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It's so hard, it's taken me almost 30 years to learn how to do it in the most rudimentary way. People in New York hate this. Learn to love the depth of the mirror!
Jan 26, 2024
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I'm a librarian. I'd like to marry a fireman. Or an astronaut. Bank robber. That kind of thing.
Nov 2, 2023