John Fraser latest novel is about Life: - mysteries and chance, how it seems impossible to make a philosophy from a mixture of what is determinate and universal, and what is invention and potential - and then, how to botch up some plan for living in this uncertainty, cf. Petronius a celebrated author with no book extant, debauché, fine administrator, accused of treachery, forced to commit suicide by Nero.

Every human has an ancestry that goes way back - to Creation? Very far, at any rate. The protagonist's name, Petronia, recalls that of the old Roman Petronius - he of the banquets and orgies, trusted administrator, forced to commit suicide by Nero on fake charges of treachery. Author of a book of satires never found, maybe never written. Petronia has no link with him, that life, but modern life affords its parallels.

So, why do things happen? Some good, some bad - how and why? A mysterious voyage is offered, taken on the spur: what lies beneath? How, afterwards, to live, to make more voyages, penetrate more mysteries and one's part in them? Plots and spying, manipulative friends and their catastrophies, abundant disappearances and all-too-evident deaths - enmesh her deeper and reluctantly in a grandiose scheme to partition the world - wars and consolidations - on, even to the universe. The prospect is alarming. She twists and turns - there are orgies, the underground, the upward climb - everything to find out why? Why does it happen, what does it signify, where does her feeble contribution come in?

She's lucky. Much of the mystery is given an explanation. The more she knows, the deeper the mystery becomes...