Stephen Newman's children find it hard to believe that their father once dressed up in Marilyn Monroe's furs, made LSD at Oxford and lived with their marble-skinned, redheaded mother Andrea in an anarchist collective. Quite often, Stephen finds it hard to believe himself. Born to hardworking immigrant parents in sunny, suburban Los Angeles, Stephen never imagined that he would spend his adult life under the grey skies of north London, would marry for convenience and stay married, would watch his children grow into people he cannot fathom. Over forty years he and his friends have built lives of comfort and success, until the events of late middle age and the new century force them to realise that they have always existed in a fool's paradise.