Michael Anthony sets this novel in Rio de Janeiro, at a time when a wave of student riots hit the city.At the centre of the story is Marisa, who teaches at a language school run by a Trinidadian called Mac. Through Marisa, two young visitors to Rio are drawn into awareness of the city’s life. Craig, who has come to see his lonely old uncle falls in love with her at once, but he is too young to handle love and a new country successfully. Alvin has a better understanding of life and allows his relationship with Marisa to develop more slowly and naturally. Instead of meeting as ‘interesting foreigners’ they are two people with much in common and it is such that they live through the turbulent events which are to come.The city holds a different kind of fate for Mac, who espouses the students’ cause. Through their friendship with him, Marisa and Alvin are taken new the centre of the whirlpool; but secure in their own love and hopes, they are not carried away. Left with an uneasy poignant memory of a friend who attempted to live on a larger scale, they can be sure that their own quiet adherence to private values represents the saner way.