However, A Vicious Circle is also about falling in and out of love, marriage, bringing up children, class consciousness, poverty, and the sad state of hospitals and the medical profession in Britain.

While she stays at home raising their daughter Rose, Amelia metamorphoses from spoiled brat to mature and responsible mother, whereas her husband loses all interest in the housewife he now realizes he has married.

Amelia is encouraged to stay on her chosen path by Grace, her cleaning woman—who is also her niece (without either of the women being aware of this), and by Tom Viner, a young doctor who becomes their lodger.

An Irish girl lacking a university education, Mary has a natural writing talent and rises to become a prominent reviewer of new fiction after having been left by her lover of many years, Mark Crawley.

[2] The New York Times called it "a vicious roman a clef",[1] and Craig has described how her ex-boyfriend, literary critic David Sexton, believed himself to be "unflatteringly depicted" in the novel.