His fourth novel, it tells of a couple named Russell and Corrine Calloway who meet in college.

Their story continues in McInerney's 2006 novel The Good Life, which follows them into middle age.

The book central characters are the fictitious editor Russell Calloway and his wife Corrine, who works as a stockbroker.

[1] The title is taken from a line in the poem "A Litany in Time of Plague" (1593) by the English poet Thomas Nashe.

(A 1942 novel about life in the Blitz, by English writer Nigel Balchin, was entitled Darkness Falls from the Air.)