This book carries on the story begun in Iris: A Memoir. The last year or so of novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch's life in the North Oxford home she shared with her husband and later in an Alzheimer home in Botley provides the framework.

As Bayley, a former literature don, describes the difficulty of coping with his wife's terminal illness and the disintegration of her mind, he returns repeatedly to memories of his own earlier life, and of more than 40 years of marriage. He recalls how he felt resigned and at peace with himself after her death, and how he is learning to cope with the loss, and is creating a new life for himself.