Professor of linguistics Desmond Bates retires early due to his worsening deafness. At the same time, his wife is experiencing a second youth, while the health of his also deaf father is going from bad to worse. Under these circumstances, Desmond meets Alex, a charming student who asks for his help with her thesis, which involves discourse analysis of suicide notes. He offers to help her, unaware of what awaits him. In this novel, Lodge writes with bone-crushing humor about human relationships, middle-aged sexual life, hopes and disappointments, decay, and death. "He longed for the rhythm of the academic year as a peasant would long for the changing of the seasons if it suddenly ceased to exist and also discovered that he missed even the structure of the academic week, the daily agenda of assignments, supervising graduate students, correcting essays, committee meetings, interviews, and deadlines for one report or another, routine tasks that made him grumble, the completion of which, no matter how insignificant or ephemeral, offered a low-level satisfaction and ensured that you would never, ever be faced with the question: Where should I drag my carcass today?"