Driven to abscond from the pressures of everyday life, the characters in this collection turn to strange ideas, distant places, and private languages in search of escape. At times the characters appear absurd, like the vicar who strikes up a conversation with the devil, and at other times they seem unreachably lonely, like the man drowned in the black waters of the Irwell, but each is presented with such compassion that it is impossible not to completely enter these peculiar fates. Through the stunning use of imagery and landscape and the descent through the strata of different lives, readers are offered an arms-length view of the forces of hope and redemption at work amidst desolate survival tactics of ordinary life.