Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives a life of enviable privilege and ease with his wife, Alice. Enviable until, one evening after dinner, Oliver attacks Alice so viciously that he beats her into a coma. Oliver is stunned by his own actions. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of this astonishing act of savagery, he tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is both tragic and monstrous a story of shame, envy...