At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's former colleagues And his son Jamie's life crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind