The day you start work is the initiation ritual. For Mason Ross [in The Incline] it means more than 'going to business' at the bank; it includes passing to the men's side and seeing the world of the quarry, where until now his father seemed unchallenged, as a microcosm of human insecurity and his father no stronger than others. (p. 259)

Although we now know how to become enmeshed in Mayne's characters despite the external simplicity of the situation, we can never capture in a short account enough of the complexity of feeling he portrays. This book is more direct than A Game of Dark, as if the author were offering us a tale of rural Yorkshire in the early days of this century, but its linear plot is no less subtle than those of the other recent books, and draws the reader into as many contrapuntal moves as...