Bradley Pearson, its narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a 'block'. Encompassed by predatory friends and relationships—his ex-wife, her delinquent brother and a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, together with Baffin's restless wife and youthful daughter—Bradley attempts escape.His failure and its aftermath lead to a violent climax; and to a coda which casts a shifting perspective on all that has gone before.