Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life--the Day of the Dead, 1938--his wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse. She is determined to rescue Firmin and their failing marriage, but her mission is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half brother, and Jacques, a childhood...

The general tone of this second volume of letters is considerably darker than that of the first. Though Under the Volcano (published in 1947) was behind Lowry, it would never leave him alone. The success of the novel became a curse: he could not avoid helping his translators; he longed for a film treatment of the book; he found it difficult to become fully engaged in new work; the celebrity associated with a best-seller was, as he put it in a poem, a 'disaster' akin to your house burning down.

Illnessses, the death of friends, threats of eviction from his beloved foreshore...