When Ronald Jenkinson, a widower, and a retired senior university lecturer tires of his own company and decides to start up a book club, little does he know what a disparate group of people will respond to his summons. They form the basis of the novel as it attempts to use contemporary realism to describe something of the way they live.
A varied group drawn together only by their interest in books. From the great bulk of criminally inclined Antioch Morrison to the slip of a redhead, Emerald Duckfield. Antioch's live- in partner Clarissa Downing isn't in the book club, but her travails when she tries to escape his clutches form an important part of the story.
Shy university student called Roddy Fitzgerald has an amorous eye for Emerald while she meets Michael Portland, the son of a garage proprietor, in a local pub and strikes up a firm relationship. Roddy after amorous ventures elsewhere eventually returns to his first love.
Justine Thompson and her bookshop owning lover Peter Handsford are having a turbulent relationship.
Caroline Amerson already has two teenaged children when she gives birth to another son at the age of thirty-five. Her chance meeting a blind man leads to a brief association brought to an end when her baby son Sammie goes down with meningitis.
Ronald has his own affair of the heart when he asks Rosalind Thomson, an old university acquaintance to join the Club but things don't work out.
Throughout all the trials and tribulations of the members the group meets once a month to discuss a particular book which all forms part of the story.