This is Iris Murdoch's 26th novel and it deals with the course of love which cannot be fabricated or controlled. Benet Barnell, who enjoys philosophy, sets up a marriage between Marian and his shy neighbor Edward who has just inherited a country house. Then, inexplicably, Marian bows out of the wedding and vanishes. Has she been kidnapped? Committed suicide? Fallen in love with someone else? Barnell's resourceful servant Jackson sets out to solve the mystery which turns out to ripple into the lives of his employer's other friends, including a bookstore clerk interested in mysticism, a famous and eccentric painter, and a spiritually inclined dressmaker. Although Murdoch describes the mysterious Jackson as "a magician" and a jack-of-all-trades, he most resembles a guardian angel able to dispense light and heal old rifts. This novel expresses Iris Murdoch's continuing fascination with the different delineations of love.