Given the brilliantly designed covers for the Penguin Decades series (five titles selected from the 50s, 60s, 70s & 80s re-jacketed with fresh, striking designs), I thought it might be fun to get together a group of colleagues from my division and read through the list of twenty titles, recording our responses. In other words - have a bit of a Penguin Press read-a-thon, documented on the blog.
Occasionally, I’ll look at one of the ‘100 or 1000 Books You Must Read’ lists, eagerly counting off all the titles I’ve read, but ultimately despairing that I’ll ever get through the whole lot. It’s much the same with the Booker Prize winners. The beauty of the Decades list is that it’s short. The series was, I suppose, a perfect excuse to indulge my inner reading geek and get stuck into a nice list of books, conveniently broken down by decades.
From that basic premise, I sent out a rallying email, calling those interested to join the reading frenzy. Visions of hordes of Penguin Press people bombarding me with emails saying – Yes, yes, pick me, pick me, I want to be involved! were, of course, only a fleeting fantasy, but I received enough enthusiastic, fervent responses to hearten and encourage me onwards.
There are, it turns out, sixteen of us in total, ranging from across Press departments: marketing, editorial and design to cross-divisional departments including production, rights, online and contracts. The form will be varied, ie: some will read one book, others will read one from each decade or several from one decade. I hope the range of people and mixed approaches will provoke particularly rich and interesting responses.
To kick off, I shall consider J L Carr’s A Month In The Country (1980), which I had actually just happened to read, it having sat on my bookshelf for years.
Lyrical, lilting, enchanting, Carr draws you into his dreamy, pastoral idyll slowly, quietly, so that before you quite realise what’s happened, you’re enmeshed in young Tom Birkin’s summer in the fictional Yorkshire village of Oxgodby.
Its reflective, nostalgic tone didn’t strike me as particularly redolent of the 80s (having grown up in that decade) or even the 70s. Birkin arrives in Oxgodby fresh from the battlefields of the First World War to uncover a medieval painting on the ceiling of the village church. A reserved and inwardly focussed man, not much is spelled out. One is left to glean, from snatches of conversation and Birkin’s inner monologues, the deep issues he’s dealing with: loss, war trauma, sense of purpose and duty, desire.
Through his work in the village, one accompanies Birkin as he tries to make sense of the world and his place in it. Hazy, dreamy, nostalgic, even Birkin questions if that time was completely real.
"Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the Plain … Day after day it was like that and each morning I leaned on the yard gate dragging at my first fag and (I’d like to think) marvelling at this splendid backcloth. But it can’t have been so; I’m not the marvelling kind. Or was I then?"
Such was the transformative nature of that summer, I reckon Tom was that kind. If only for that month.
It is a quiet masterpiece. And one for all looking for solace in landscape, mind, life – seeking to slow down, if only for the time it takes to read this short, delightful novel.
Emily Hill, Publishing Co-ordinator
Penguin Press
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