Stanley, crazy for socialism when he meets and marries Katherine, succumbs quickly to violent sexual mania and is shipped to a family estate outside Santa Barbara, where in the company of assorted male nurses, psychologists, cooks and gardeners he spends the rest of his tormented life. Boyle tracks this life. But there's not much to track. Stanley talks filth, lunges, catatonically stares, hurts his handlers, shows glimmers of reason, regresses. Eddie, the novel's third main character and a working-class Boston Irishman, is a satyr, a bully and a lout, and in concert with Stanley allows Boyle to explore all that is wolfish and brutal in man.
Doctors come and go.
Staff leaves and returns. There's an earthquake. The grounds are neglected. A plodding linearity sets in. Relief of a sort comes courtesy of intercut scenes charting Stanley and Katherine's courtship and marriage.