If the real children of great men and women are their deeds (their books, in the case of writers), where does that leave mere flesh and blood? Stranded, with a sense of profound but broken connection. This state is likely to become permanent with the death of the parent, but Greg Bellow got used to it early. His father left the first Mrs Bellow, Anita, when Greg was eight.

Greg Bellow is a retired psychotherapist, someone who has made damage and healing his life's work. He should be well placed to reconcile his father's contradictions, or to reconcile himself to them, though it doesn't work out that way. Therapists don't necessarily understand their own drives, any more than novelists, also traders in insight, necessarily understand theirs.