India in the late days of the Raj, England in the great slump of the 1930's; these are the settings of this story of family interaction and decline. James and Dorothy Martinmas appear to inhabit a sort of Garden of Eden in the green hills of souther India. But there are serpents: in the past and in the present. Dorothy's early childhood loss of her father, James's early childhood exile from both parents, have left their inevitable distortions creating tensions which threaten the happiness of their marriage and their idyllic situation. And there is a human serpent too, an embittered and sadistic subordinate, who undermines their security and precipitates their exile from this seeming paradise. This is Somerset Maugham territory, but with the addition of young children, animals and grandparents. In the end the children proceed happily on their way. They provide the leavening in what is otherwise a sombre tale. It is they who carry the torch of life. A quotation from an early reviewer may give the flavour. "But to your novel. What I loved about it: the range, the sense of an entire world, the sense of location and beautiful natural descriptions, the easy physicality of the erotic passages, the respect you pay to the integrity of your characters, especially the children, the care you take to identify the period/place/class by its characteristic things... It's such a loving book."