A month in the countryside, by the English editor and novelist J.L. Carr (1912–1994), is what it appears to be: a simple, vital, and amiable novel, a "rural idyll"—as the author himself calls the very brief preface—soaked in bittersweet nostalgia, a charming story about our human condition. But it is also much more. The placid summer sunshine that bathes and warms every page of the novel, as well as the good-naturedness and predisposition toward happiness of its protagonists, hide the memory of bitterly cold, muddy winters, broken hearts, traumatized memories, and horrific wounds. Wise without grandiloquence, Carr's novel, originally published in 1980 and now translated into Catalan by Dolors Udina with her usual skill, brings to mind that memorable verse by Leonard Cohen that says: "Everything has a chink: that's how the light gets in."