[6][7] The novel is centred upon the friendship between Dante and a schoolmate known as "Johnno" in their adolescence and early adulthood in the 1940s and 1950s in Brisbane.

The subtropical Brisbane environment and various elements of upper-class Australian culture in the twentieth century recur throughout the book.

The novel takes the form of an extended reminiscence and begins with the narrator finding a photograph of Johnno among his recently deceased father's belongings.

The novel ends with Johnno presumed to have committed suicide (though the reader does not know for sure) and his funeral in suburban Brisbane.

Johnno's occasional experience that way is frankly admitted, so is Dante's relationship with his "boy from Sarina", but they do not see themselves as being defined by these involvements and they are not.