 The skeleton of a woolly mammoth, which rotted where it was killed with flints by early humans, lies where it fell and is unearthed as the trenches are dug.In this context the seemingly all-consuming 'machine' of war becomes merely a blip.As Imogen watches a surfer who repeatedly falls from his board, which rises behind him like a tombstone, at the end of the novel she cannot help, in spite of grief, to see that life goes on in all its power, exhilaration and tragedy.