Richard Mahony, despite finding initial contentment with his wife Mary, becomes increasingly dissatified with his ordered life. His restlessness is not understood by Mary, who has to endure the constant shattering of her security as Richard desperately attempts to free himself; his attempts finally plunge them into poverty. In the figure of Richard Mahony, Richardson captures the soul of the emigrant, ever restless, ever searching for some equilibrium, yet never really able to settle anywhere. Richard’s search, though, is also the more universal one for a meaning that will validate and give purpose to his existence.

    His wife, Agatha, having had more than she can take, has finally walked out on him. With Jack and his equally unreliable adolescent son, Stanley, left to fend for themselves, pandemonium ensues. Full of sardonic wit and mad capers, father and son blaze a trail of drunken chaos through the city's pubs, clubs, race courses, and their own increasingly battered home. Along the way, they fall in with a weird and wondrous assortment of lowlife characters who turn up to enliven the kind of party that Mr. Gudgeon invariably intends to be a "quiet, respectable turnout," but which, somehow, never is.