Oliver has lost his wife Eden to illness. Still grieving three years later, unable or unwilling to imagine a future without her, he finds himself stuck in a joyless existence. But everything appears to change when on a bright December morning a stranger asks him for a light and then invites him to “They Them”, a poetry reading event by “a poet like no other”. The stranger is Alex, or They, and a ventriloquist’s dummy is Them, representing her dead husband Sam in a performance they had planned to do together. ‘Life is love and death,’ They Them declare on stage.

Instantly drawn to each other by more than just their shared experience of loss, Oliver and Alex embark on a whirlwind romance. But tensions are being constantly stirred up by an ever-present cast of meddling characters, and as the strains of the present increase, the betrayals of a past full of lies and gratuitous disclosures soon begin to spill out and cause dangerous rifts…

“Cacoyannis writes very well on a small canvas. His previous works have had elements of satire, though it may be a stretch to see this latest as having such; these characters appear, at least, to be very serious as the author puts them through their paces—perhaps too serious. But maybe that is the point: They’re all navel gazers, well-meaning most of the time, but self-absorbed, nonetheless. They demonstrate a panoply of sexual variety, and bed-hopping is a recurring motif, with so-and-so being unfaithful with what’s-his/her-name with abandon. But to offset this, they all seem to be compulsive confessors; in fact, transgression followed by confession is shown to be a social tactic among this group, a strategy for leverage… Still, readers will come to like Ollie and care about the outcome of his new love with Alex, which holds real promise…

A rather strange but skillfully written study of a group of friends doing their best to get by.” Kirkus Reviews

“a literary gem that contains all the suspense of a good thriller” Casey Dorman’s Writer’s Blog