Arthur Less struggles to define his relationship with Freddy Pelu to his doctor. Freddy is Arthur’s boyfriend and the narrator of Arthur’s story. They live in a bungalow in San Francisco that Arthur was given by his ex-boyfriend, the famous poet Robert Brownburn. They live with their bulldog Tomboy. Freddy describes this life as “[n]ine months of unmartial bliss” (10). Now forty, Freddy started a relationship with Arthur when Freddy was twenty-seven and Arthur forty-one.. During that first chapter of their relationship, they didn’t live together, and they took a break after nine years. Freddy had chased Arthur around the world to propose to him, but Arthur didn’t accept.

Freddy introduces the novel as “the story of a crisis in our lives” (11). At first, things are going well for Arthur. He’s a well-known American novelist who is hired to speak at literary events and has been asked to be on the prize committee for an esteemed literary award. He has also been hired to write a profile on the writer H.H.H Mandern. This is quite a career reversal for Arthur, who had spent fifteen years with a more famous writer, the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Robert.