It is 1969, and Stephen meets up with old friend Astrid and her lover Spencer, and stays with them in the hippy household ';The Hollies.' Peace and love are tangible: until his passionate attraction for another girl in the household goes sour.

He drifts into the radical arts scene and far-left politics, and finally into a squalid squat in London.

A return to the idyllic ';The Hollies' seems a good idea, but now the house has become a commune, and Spencer is the guru.

When this too, inevitably, goes sour, Stephen has to try to understand what was real and what was just a dream?From the Hardcover edition.