There are four main characters: Magda Danvers, her husband Francis Lake, Alice Henry, and her husband Hugo Henry. At the book's opening, all seem more notable for what they have done in the past than for their current activities.

Magda, in her graduate school days, was a combination of brilliance, charisma, and self-promotion. She managed to get her study of visionary poets published before it was ever submitted as her dissertation — a flouting of academic taboos for which she later paid. In the "present" of the narrative, she is still witty, analytical, and full of unique observations and theories. As her illness goes on, more and more of these cannot be communicated but take place only in her own mind. This mental isolation is another tragedy which parallels the tragedy of her unfinished second book.

Even though much of the book takes place from Magda's point of...