On a peat & heather island off the west coast of Scotland Effie & her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors & tell each other stories Nora at first recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear like who her father was
- variously Jimmy Jack or Ernie Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob a student who never goes to lectures seldom gets out of bed & to whom the Klingons are as real as the French & the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers) But strange things are happening Why is Effie being followed? Why is everyone writing novels? Is someone killing the old people? & where is the mysterious yellow dog?