Henry Dobbs is born into ugliness and squalor in the Kensington slums in London. He is a strange boy in many ways; he cares a great deal for well-made and rare things and the beauty that he sees in them, but people are a different matter. They seem relatively unimportant to him, really only there for his convenience. As he grows up, despite a savage and loveless relationship with his harridan mother, Henry begins to flower. His...