Welcome to the comical, ironical, and multiple worlds of one Violet Pansy Proudlock (a ventriloquist), who is also known as Alice Thumb (a gossip and secret sharer of limited imaginings) and, at other times, as Mavis Furness Barnwell Halleton (a writer twice married).We follow Mavid through two marriages and watch her bury two husbands. Above all, we are privy to the attendant avoidances, interruptions, and irrelevancies that are part of her attempt to complete a novel. It's a process that is painful, joyful, rueful, and profound. Through it all, Violet-Alice-Mavis chooses to be the entertainer, to make us laugh and cry, to be the ventriloquist who dares to enter the speech of others and expose them.