The novel follows the life of Eleanor Herbert Brent, a recent university graduate, living in London and engaged to be married.

Helen Yglesias in The New York Times found that this "is a supremely English novel, infused with the troubled, cocky and half‐defeated spirit of contemporary England.

George Orwell might have written such a book, if women interested him, which they didn't, and if his style was not so flat out."

"[1] Encyclopedia of the Novel notes that the novel "observes Miss Herbert's career in close details without offering judgment on the corruption and vapidity of her existence.

The reader must deduce these from both the abundance of sordid detail and Miss Herbert's incomprehensible lack of historical awareness.