J.L. Carr

Doom board

Birkin, the narrator, has been commissioned to uncover a medieval wall painting in a country church. At the same time another man, Moon, is searching for a lost grave in a nearby field. Both are war survivors.

The book opens at a railway station in the pouring rain. The narrator steps off a train and into an alien world. It ends, after a season, with the narrator setting off back home – drawing a line under the place and the time spent there, making the point from a distance of nearly sixty years that he has never been back.