Retired banker Paul Sturgis ‘had always known it was his destiny to die among strangers’. He lives alone; his one surviving relative (and acquaintance) is a determinedly genteel, regally distant cousin-by-marriage. His solitude is broken by a chance encounter in Venice with a much-younger woman who, like Blanche DuBois, seems to rely on the kindness of strangers (and the generosity of her ex-husband) for her continued existence. Sturgis doesn’t much like her, but is (inconsistently) grateful for her random, increasingly imposing company on their return to London. At the same time, he unexpectedly renews his acquaintance with one of two ‘great loves’, who once told him he was ‘too nice!’

This is a remarkably interior novel: much of the action takes place in Sturgis’s head, either in reflection or reminiscence. His rather desperate, tenuous relationships with the three women come to define the late stages of his life, almost by their lack of solid meaning. What’s better: to live a ‘peaceful but boring’ life alone, or one complicated by human contact, where circumstances constantly threaten to get the better of you?