A schoolboy is expelled from Tregowan in disgrace just before the Christmas holidays and has to go home and face his family, with the story travelling ahead of him. Marsh wrote fast and for money - he is best remembered for a horror novel that outsold Dracula in its year - and was equally at home in the social comedy of failure. Fifty-seven paintings by Frith, Munch and others picture lessons, landscapes and homecomings, matching the schoolboy's disgrace and the family he must face.