Violet Farr is Irish, married to the ineffectual Cecil, a repressed homosexual. In a moment of joyless union the conceive a son, the absurd Lumsden, but they are incapable of showing him love. He himself is a ne'er do well and fathers an illegitimate child, Spencer, by a lost soul named Dolly, herself a refugee from an unhappy upbringing in a Surrey village. When the severely neglected, traumatised boy is dumped on Violet, his grandmother, he becomes the focus for all the despair and disappointment that her son had loaded upon her. This is a compelling novel, precise and vivid, a novel which probes every exposed nerve of family feeling and family hell. It is a harrowing story but ultimately a profoundly inspiring one.