Peter Hallam has it all—a good job with all the perks, a loving wife, a comfortable circle of friends, and financial security. The only blots on the horizon are a layabout son and a dotty mother-in-law hunkered down in the spare room. But within days of the appointment of a new M.D. he is out of work, and at 45 it seems his working life is over. As his debts mount at the same rate as his job applications are rejected, the rest of his life falls apart—his friends drop him, his son sneers at him, and when he is forced to put the house on the market his wife leaves him for his best friend. Spiralling into despair and possibly destitution he discovers the hideous reality of how failures are treated in the caring '90s, but he also discovers a stalwart and highly unlikely ally—Monica, his mad mother-in-law.