With a background of the Church year, this novel centres on St Basil's, an undistinguished North London Parish, and the characters who live there The 'unsuitable' attachment is that formed by the well-bred Ianthe Broome (of the local library) with John, whose 'shoes seemed to be a little too pointed', but this affair is almost incidental to the innumerable small absurdities in the lives of the Rev Mark Ainger, his wife Sophia and, importantly, her cat Faustina