How do we grow as adults? What comfort or grudge must be dispensed with, what risk embraced? This comic drama traces the lives of four stalled characters as they intersect and influence one another in odd and unexpected ways.

Carol, a wife trapped, isolated and controlled by an awful man, seethes under a serene mask, but, when sickness tips the balance of power in her favour, she plots a path of retribution.

Frank, an amiable, aging medical practitioner challenged by the unsettling prospect of disabling disease and a decline in professional competency, becomes preoccupied with the looming spectre of irrelevance.

Quince, named after the fruit, has been content to lead a safe life supported by a comfortable inheritance, but a jolt in early middle-age exposes the tantalising and terrifying truth of his potential.

And Eleanor, Frank's younger colleague, is woken from a seven-year hibernation triggered by the early death of her son's father and forced to risk hurt for happiness.

Set in the central North Island of New Zealand the book provides a matrix for these flawed but endearing characters, confronted by choice and chance, to navigate their way toward interdependent but uncertain outcomes.