Published in 1980, this slim novel (at just over a 100 pages) is perfect for a quiet afternoon. But believe us, you will want it to last longer, and to read slower, to soak it all in.
It is 1920 and Tom Birkin is back from the war, his trauma manifesting in a stammer and a near-constant facial twitch. Getting away from London, he lands a summer job in the village of Oxgodby in Yorkshire, in a church, uncovering a large medieval wall painting that has been obscured by layers of whitewash over time. It’s slow and methodical work and it suits him. He likes being in this place where nobody knows him. Sleeping on the floor in the belfry, drumming up his meagre meals of bread and marge and rasher, Tom slowly gets into the rhythm of life in the village. People, adults and children alike, drop in on him as he works away steadily on top of his ladder, including Charles Moon, another veteran who is tasked with finding a lost grave in the churchyard. He is invited around to Sunday meals, included in simple summer outings. As time passes, he finds a sense of solace and contentment in the peaceful countryside and in his work, he finds friendship, and even the possibility of love.
The story is narrated by Tom as an old man, in 1978, looking back at this singular period in his life, the few weeks of summer in the country that stayed forever in his memory, “a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen”