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...