Music is at the heart of this book. The devotion to it of a group of amateur musicians forming the Boman Quartet prevents a series of dramatic events from turning into heart-rending tragedy. Music enables each of the musicians to rise above his own bleak situation. But there is humour, too, especially in the satirical, larger than life portrayal of the local sectarians, led by the bank manager Ankersen, as they seek in vain to break the spirit of the musicians. And humour of a more earthly kind in Janniksen, the huge blacksmith who is completely at the mercy of his petty-minded sectarian wife. The setting is a small Faroese town at the beginning of the 20th century - and that town is today the capital of the Faroe Islands, Torshavn.