At fourteen, Evan did not think of himself as a religious person. His parents called themselves Christians, though (weddings and funerals apart) they went to church only on Christmas Day. Evan himself had been brought up by them to believe in God. It was something they seemed to expect of him, though they did little about it, leaving all that to school assemblies.
But believing in God, Evan found, wasn't all that easy. How on earth did people manage to believe in this---this what? person, thing, idea?---if they could not see him (Him, they said), or it, or whatever? (p. 3)

And if there was one---supposedly a loving, caring God---how come the news each day was so filled with cruelty and famine and war and disaster and death? How could you worship someone, something, that allowed, or perhaps was powerless to prevent, such horrors?
I'd like to think there was a God, I really would, he told himself. Perhaps one day I will.
In the meantime, I've got the Roundhill.
(p. 4)

In some respects the old man had changed little from the boy. He still placed his shoes neatly together, lacing the left one first; still paid his respect to magpies; and still had not come to terms with that God in whom he wished he could believe as the probable time of his transfer to that reserved site in the churchyard drew nearer. (p. 80)