It's the last go-round for German Moran, an elderly writer with the courage to stare death in the eye, but who nevertheless bemoans the frailties and indignities of old age. This curmudgeon with a sensitive artist's ego takes the reader on an intellectual and emotional adventure occasioned by his infatuation with a lovely young actress. His rival in the affair is a handsome, dashing, but insensitive -- and also very married -- movie producer who happens to be his son This charming swan song of a novel is populated with other lively and unforgettable characters from the New York art and literary scene -- all to entertain and divert us from the larger underlying, eternal questions about death and dying.