Point Counter Point

First published in 1928, this novel follows a set of London intellectuals, artists, and hangers-on whose lives intercut like musical lines. Walter Bidlake drifts between a dependent lover and the reckless Lucy Tantamount. The novelist Philip Quarles returns from India with his wife Elinor and observes the circle as material. Mark Rampion argues for a whole bodily life; the fascist Everard Webley organises a militia; the nihilist Spandrell looks for a crime that will prove something. Laboratories, nightclubs, and country houses share the same weeks. The book is a satirical group portrait of talk and appetite, not a single hero's progress.

12 full-page. Full blue-green cloth decorated in dark green and gold. Orange dust-jacket printed in white and black.