The novel combines literature, mysticism and suburban life in 1950s Australia to show the ignorance and prejudice of the everyday people in reaction to the few who see the infinite, snowballing with catastrophic consequences[2] The book begins with an epigraph from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which William Blake imagines a conversation with the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.

Flashbacks to her childhood show her abuse and torment at the hands of her father, a Sydney wine merchant who married above his station and arrogantly squandered his wife’s fortune on the construction of Xanadu, the crumbling estate where Mary now lives.

Her distant cousin Eustace Cleugh, who once visited Xanadu but responded to Mary’s childhood infatuation with disdain, has recently resumed financially supporting her after a long absence during the war.

The pair quickly develop a mutual fear and hostility of one another as Jolley strikes up a friendship with Mrs Flack, a kindred spirit and the town gossip who lives on her own in Sarsaparilla.

Born in the 1880s to a wealthy Jewish merchant family in Germany, Mordecai’s early childhood was tinged with the faint awareness of the pogroms underway in eastern Europe at the time.

Soon before returning home to fight for Germany in World War I, his mother sends a letter to tell him that her father has renounced Judaism; relatives later blame her death on this decision.

He recognises that his employer Harry Rosetree is also a German Jew, but his overtures are sternly rebuffed by the factory owner, whose family are shown to be doing their best to assimilate to middle-class Australian society.

As a child she emigrates to Sydney from Britain after a farming accident kills her brother, and later works as a domestic servant in the household of wealthy socialite Jinny Chalmers-Robinson.

Their marriage comes to an end after she confronts him at a brothel where she also encounters and shows kindness to Alf Dubbo, an Aboriginal man who is treated abusively by the others present.

Alf’s early life is recounted, including his abduction from his mother and childhood in the home of the Anglican clergyman Timothy Calderon, whose sister encourages his nascent gift for painting.

Arriving in Sydney, he sublets a room from the prostitute Hannah, where he lives a reclusive existence honing his artistic talents by painting scenes of the Gospels.

When Hannah steals some of his paintings and sells them, claiming to be helping his financial situation, he is deeply hurt by the betrayal and immediately leaves, later taking a room in Barranugli to work at the bicycle lamp factory.

Alf stays in his room and works for days on end to paint the scene he witnessed at Ruth’s house, which he incorporates into his picture of Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot.

Ruth watches her eldest daughter Else with her new partner Bob Tanner — both of whom helped tend to Mordecai — and realises that he will treat Else with the love and respect that she never knew in her own marriage.

[3] Mary Hare - an eccentric and troubled heiress born into a reputable family of early Australian settlers, now living in a decaying estate on the outskirts of Sarsaparilla.

Mordecai Himmelfarb - A German Jew who leads a distinguished if provincial career as an English professor after decorated service in World War I, until the rising tide of anti-Semitism that accompanies the Third Reich robs him of his wife.

Ruth Godbold - A devoutly religious woman with a large brood of young children who emigrates to Australia from England after a family tragedy.

Jinny Chalmers-Robinson - A wealthy Sydney socialite with a distant relationship to her husband who briefly employs Ruth Godbold in domestic service.

Konrad and Ingeborg Stauffer - A liberal couple who shelter Himmelfarb as the Nazi regime’s anti-Semitic policies gradually reach their zenith with the Holocaust.

Most of the narrative is set in Sarsaparilla, the fictional stand-in for the Sydney suburb of Castle Hill, where White lived with his partner Manoly Lascaris after returning to Australia.