Jones

Goronwy Herbert Hughes is facing early retirement. At four o'clock in the morning he considers his situation. At fifty-seven he has been eased out of a job. Why is he unmarried, without a family, without friends? Why is he alone in a flat filled with works of art collected over a lifetime?He has all the time in the world to work out the answers as he tries to reconstruct the chain of events that has led to this isolation, to trace his own progress as the only son of a hillside farm in North Wales, towards academic success and a cherished niche in the Bohemian subculture of London. He raises the ghosts of his earlier self -- rebellious son, philandering bachelor-about-town, would-be aesthete, inconstant lover, brilliant academic -- in the hope that a pattern will emerge. Reluctantly Jones begins to discern a lifelong servitude to the notion of living free, even from the enchanting Glenys, the woman he still adores.(Description from the dust-jacket.)