"Mr. Valency killed off his hero, Ashby, in the novel of that name, but has thought better of it...the dialogue crackles, the episodes are hilariously unpredictable..."–The Atlantic

Ashby was dead and is alive. In the book named for him, his author bustled him off the stage, in the conviction, apparently, that a force of nature is a bore after two hundred pages. But Maurice Valency has profited by his mistake. Ashby lives again in this novel as befits a man of the world, without apology or explanation. Yet an air of late-summer sadness hovers over the sallies, highjinks, and impromptu legends that are the essence of this hero. Is it because the beautiful Julie is just such another natural force, with her own subversive sense of humor, her inventive talent, and her answering flair for predicament? In any case, an old book affirms that to love and be wise is not given to the race of man. And the novel is charged with the common complaints of the species, like the end of youth, of beauty, of all promise. It is on Julie's account that Ashby and his narrator lose the best part of what the Germans call Lebensmut: the courage to meet the terms that life proposes-for which we have no single word in our language, but whose passing we feel no less keenly.