Everything had been going well for him, until the cats - and that rather mousy woman. True, at forty-two, Eric Thorsen may not have quite lived up to his promise as a pianist, but accompanying struggling dance troupes and doing a bit of teaching kept him in practice. True, while he couldn't seem to commit himself to a relationship, any number of women, nonplussed by his astonishing good looks, offered steady distraction. And true, if life in Manhattan had become the usual series of confrontations with confusingly trendy restaurants and unintelligible immigrants, at least he had a ridiculously affordable apartment.

But when his downstairs neighbor begins taking in stray cats - many stray cats - their pungent miasma drifting upward through a heating vent makes that apartment unbearable. Bad as they are, though, the felines only seem to be the catalyst for an entire series of mishaps for Eric, including the unraveling of his sister's affair with a married lawyer, a surprise visit by his father that stretches on endlessly, and the growing awkwardness of trying to deal with his best friend, who's recently discovered he's gay. Most perplexing is Wanda, the rather plain woman who accosted him one Sunday after church and who now seems to be getting more entangled in his life, despite her affair with an ex-priest. While Elsie house-sits in a luxurious penthouse, keeping careful watch over a veritable fleet of VCRs taping every show on television, Eric reluctantly takes refuge in her more modest East Village apartment.

The deferential and lonely Wanda turns out to be more of a challenge to Eric than he could ever have anticipated, and their unlikely courtship not only brings them unexpected pleasure but also offers redemption to their circle of hapless friends. Tracing a group of New Yorkers teetering on the verge of middle age and trying desperately (and often hilariously) to make the connections their lives have been missing, James Wilcox confirms himself as a writer "who may well stand among the classic American humorists" (New York Newsday).