It is the first in the author's "Langton Tetralogy" (which comprises The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love and When Blackbirds Sing).

Alice is trapped in a life where her happiness is a secondary consideration among the rest of the family, who make continual demands on her money.

Geoffrey Hutton in The Argus noted that the author was writing a family saga of wealth and influence in Melbourne with a difference.

"The prod-nosed social investigators may find some interesting sidelights here on the gilded life of the governing class in the 70's or the early affluence of East St Kilda before the parvenus flooded into Toorak.

But the late twentieth century had little patience with the scandals and vicissitudes of Anglo-Australian aristocratic families, with no apparent connections with convicts, sealers or whalers, or the indigenous people.