Published by Faber & Faber. This first edition published 1976.
Hard cover and dustjacket. Dustjacket with some scuffing and chipping, and some marking to covers. Hardcover very good. Overall lovely copy.

Conflict between personal and family identity is at the core of this powerful novel, by a New Zealand author, of a family bound as much by exploitation and subtle cruelty as by blood and history, a family ruthlessly driven towards disintegration as its members play out their mutually destructive roles. Kingsley, a provincial bookseller, living more in his past than in his present, plays the game of choices, plotting other ways he might have taken. His wife plans her escape, while their children strive to maintain the uncertain freedom they have won. Only his father, living in a shack in the garden, anchors Kingsley to reality.

It is Christmas. The family entertains, and under the eyes of their guests, amid violence, cruelty and tenderness, the edifice finally crumbles. And only then, seemingly stripped of everything, is Kingsley able to make a real choice, to enter a game he has some chance of winning.