 Both Peter and Amaryllis have been involved in failed relationships before – exactly how many and how disastrously we only find out gradually – and they are haunted by the danger of repeating their past mistakes.Hoban's writing builds up a series of metaphors throughout the book so that, as in a dream, many things take on unusual significance, or seem to represent something else.The idea of the dream itself seems to function for Hoban as a symbol of the way in which elements from the past come back to affect the present day, and in the characters' dreams various significant people and objects from real life appear in exaggerated forms, not all of which are fully explained.