The novel is told in the first-person narrative by Isabel Moore, who embodies the paradoxes of Christian theology in her search for love and a meaningful existence. As a teen-ager, she has a remarkable capacity for hatred, directed primarily toward Margaret Casey, who attempts to trap Isabel's widowed father into marriage. Gordon portrays Isabel's conflict as classically Irish Catholic, with her natural sensuality at war with her sense of guilt at what she perceives as her greed and selfishness. Love, she understands, is a desire that, for most people, cannot be fulfilled. In working on a survey of the needs of old people, Isabel learns the horrors of age, the desire of old people for someone to love them for themselves, a need that cannot be met. Isabel, in her attempt to assuage her guilt at being unable to love Margaret Casey, narrowly escapes an earthly form of...