At first, a William Mayne story always sounds to me as if it had been translated from some other tongue by someone with a rather thin gift for languages. The structures are awkward, and sometimes passages have to be paraphrased to reveal their meaning. But after a few pages, the reader grows accustomed to all this and forgets it, because Mayne's style has a strength all its own and the strength takes over.

This story [of "A Year and a Day"], unlike some others of his, is a gentle, uncomplicated tale….

It has no particular wisdom or message, nor even the traditional—suspense and drama of the folktales it most nearly resembles. The characters do not live on in the imagination after the book is closed. But the sense of something in motion behind this story, and the resonance of its telling, provide a special power, as they...