It is his birthday and he invites his parents to dinner to meet Ruth for the first time.
After much wine has been drunk, David pretends to read a chapter from his autobiographical novel, in which the 'stifling, sinister attractions' of his mother drive the protagonist, Jack Flea into the arms of Hermione, an older woman who turns David into her fantasy child.
[3] Peter Buckman in The Listener wrote of the play "tension well beyond breaking point...a half hour I shall not easily forget".
[2] Writing in 1980, Ian McEwan reveals, 'My intention was to take a television cliché - a kind of family reunion, a dinner party - and to transform it by degrees and by logical extension to a point where fantasy had become reality.
The self-reflecting fiction at the centre of the play is perhaps one of those conceits that many writers new to the form are tempted to exploit.