Set in a time that is simultaneously now and the early 1900s, the novel tests the pretensions and aspirations of its four main characters: Matalulu, poised to make her long-awaited debut on the cabaret stage; Bapa Jim, her husband, a quiet family man about to start World War I; Saho, their secretive son, offered a job as a subterranean mole man; and dull Bahena, emerging as the locus of a telepathic alien communications network. Then there’s Aunt Gina. Who is or isn’t she? Is that her on a wintry beach in an old photograph? Is she the girl in the polka dot dress? Was she murdered in a sordid underground London club scandal? Is she a double agent for unnamed intelligence services? Does she exist at all? Aunt Gina’s presence as a speculative uncertainty becomes entangled with the family’s private adventures and forces a reckoning that is simultaneously outlandish and poignant.