In his first novel in English, Manuel Puig strikes a balance between irony and sympathy as he tells of the dealings of two men whose deceptive reminiscences recall those of the characters in his better-known Kiss of the Spider Woman. Larry, a down-and-out writer, is paid to push a wheelchair-bound Argentine political exile, Ramirez, around Greenwich Village. Through their journeys and their conversations about sex and politics, we witness the collision of two "solitary fantasy systems, " revealing the men to be enmeshed in the lies that make up their bitter, shadowy symbiosis.