Simply put, this book has given me all I look for: a cascade of words that ring so true and are beautifully written; wonderfully realised characters even though we know them so briefly; a perfect setting (especially for an Anglophile who loves art and archaeology); and a simple story about complex people.

I had a feeling of immense content and, if I thought at all, it was that I'd like this to go on and on, no-one going, no-one coming, autumn and winter always loitering around the corner, the summer's ripeness lasting forever, nothing disturbing the even tenor of my way. 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 marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.” It is summer, 1920, and, as Tom Birkin watches, Moon has been digging into the North Yorkshire turf of Oxgodby for several hours, taking his time. Then Birkin tells the reader: Reading this, I’d be immersed in simple wonder at the beauty of birdsong, landscape, or architectural stone, and then a deftly-planted question would poke up, but without the promise of flowering, and indeed, only some did. I loved that. Gifted with excessive self-awareness, uncommon lucidity and a rare sense of humor, he speaks from the intimacy of a first-person narrator and makes the reader a sensory participant of the impact a few weeks spent among strangers in self-effacing examination, of how a tiny parcel of his history, infused him with a renewed zest for life.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.” the first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.” He has no idea what is behind the whitewash, but it isn't long before he knows he is working on a masterpiece. "So, each day, I released a few more inches of a seething cascade of bones, joints and worm-riddled vitals frothing over the fiery weir. It was breathtaking. A tremendous waterfall of color, the blues of the apex falling, then seething into a turbulence of red; like all truly great works of art, hammering you with its whole before beguiling you with its parts." Birkin considers odd couples more than once, especially Keach and Alice, and how utterly different they are at home, compared with elsewhere. Birkin’s job of clearing away centuries of overpaint, soot and dirt from what turns out to be a stunningly imagined Judgement scene underneath starts as simply something to fill his time at a moment when his life has fallen apart. He’s got this twitch from the War, and his wife Vinny has left him for another man but will probably return and start the cycle all over again.

Tom Birken is summoned to the countryside from the teaming streets of London to practice his craft revealing a Medieval painting that was originally painted 500 years previously, and had been whitewashed over about a hundred years later. It is a picture of doom predating the fantastical, terrifying visions of Bruegel by at least a hundred years. That’s the phrase the war veteran thinks of when he arrives in the small, poor Yorkshire village that is “starveling country”! in other words — not getting the best welcome or given the best living situation— Tom was actually rather happy — or at least content. His inner pride and strength—trust in his own abilities to handle the daily hard work—was never a question for Tom. He and Moon are a very different pair (not a couple): both are ex-army, spending the summer funded by a bequest from Miss Hebron (in Moon’s case, he has to find the missing grave of an ancestor). But Moon lives in a hole, while Birkin lives up a ladder in the belfry. At the end of his year in the USA Carr continued his journey westward and found himself travelling through the Middle East and the Mediterranean as the Second World War loomed. He arrived in France in September 1939 and reached England, where he volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force. He was trained as an RAF photographer and stationed in West Africa, later serving in Britain as an intelligence officer, an experience he translated into fiction with A Season in Sinji.He meets a man named Moon who is camping in a tent in the cemetery and has been commissioned to find the bones of an ancestor for their patron. As time goes on, and both men realize how simply wonderful this moment in time has been for them, they start to linger in their work, making it last, not wanting it to end. There is a story about Moon that you will have to read the book to discover. One summer, just after the Great War, Tom Birkin, a demobbed soldier, arrives in the village of Oxgodby. He has been invited to uncover and restore a medieval wall painting in the local church. At the same time, Charles Moon - a fellow damaged survivor of the war - has been asked to locate the grave of a village ancestor. As these two outsiders go about their work of recovery, they form a bond, but they also stir up long dormant passions within the village. What Berkin discovers here will stay with him for the rest of his life . . . Read more Details