This book follows Charles Arrowby, who is a popular director of plays in the London theater scene. Charles attempts to retire to a seaside town for some peace and quiet after a long and dramatic career. Charles is a very possesive and jealous man. This is evident very early on in the way he describes his new home— making weirdly extensive use of the word “my”. He assumes a kind of ownership of the features of the surrounding area: saying “my rocks”, “my critters”, “my cove” (not exact quotes). These qualities extend to his personal relations, too, and much of the insanity of the plot can be attributed to this fact. The story proceeds as a combination memoir/diary that gives you a first-person view as the first year-ish of Charles’s retirement goes completely off the rails as the people affected by his possesive impulses, presumably the source of the drama he claims to be escaping, come back into his life. This, combined with the reapparance of some very important people from his past leads to Charles doing some truly cracked stuff. Since this is a diary, you get to decide if any of these scenes actually went down they way he says (or if they even make any sense). I don’t know how to say much else about the story without spoiling things. This bothers me somewhat, but if I had the time to do a closer reading, maybe I could. I enjoyed this book nonetheless.