Henrietta Symons is the third daughter in a large Victorian family, a misfit with neither charm nor beauty. Querulous and bad-tempered, she watches as her life passes aimlessly by, clinging to her one saving grace: she knows herself for what she is, and self-knowledge, however bitter, turns her life of defeat into a kind of victory.

In praise of the novel, The Independent observed: "Mayor's achievement is to take the 'superfluous female' of the Victorian census return, and transform her into a figure of luminous importance."