Like Colm Tóibíns THE MASTER, David Lodges novel is an exploration of the last years of Henry James. Beginning in the 1880s, when James has become an internationally famous and successful novelist, Lodge takes the reader deeply into the writers life as he struggles with the disjunctions between his life and his work, and attempts to turn tragedy into art. At the end of the novel, Lodge, a longtime admirer of Jamess novels, writes a short and very personal appreciation.