he short (273 pp.

) novel is the life story of Paul Roberts, who we first meet as a 19-year-old Sussex
University undergraduate returning to his parents' house in the leafy southern suburbs of London
(Sutton, in Surrey, is suggested as a model.) The time is the early sixties, and there are a few
references to current events. Paul joins the tennis club, which is the one of the few opportunities
such places offer for socialising. In a random-draw mixed doubles, he is thrown together with Susan
MacLeod, a 48-year-old married woman with two daughters older than Paul. Improbably, Paul and
Susan become lovers and she eventually leaves her family to set up house with Paul in South
London. Having nothing to do but a little housekeeping, Susan soon descends into alcoholism and
dementia. Paul departs and embarks on foreign travels, picking up jobs and women at random.
Paul is a quintessentially alienated character. With no interest in either politics or religion, and no
particular ambition, he takes life as it comes. As he narrates his life in this book, he freely admits that
memory is unreliable and he may not be telling us the truth.