To be flamboyantly handsome and sexually vicious is neither rare nor remarkable. But Gilver Memmer is also precociously gifted. He is a brilliant painter.
By the age of twenty-eight he is fabulously rich, with the world, especially women, at his feet. Life is so accommodating he forgets to bother doing the thing that brought him fame: painting. Yet, year after year, it seems to make no difference to his success.
Then in the space of a fortnight his money dries up, his house burns down and he begins to drink. Brought face to face with the wreck of the man he had once been, forgotten and scorned, Memmer has to confront an age-old problem: if redemption exists, how and where do you find it?