Against a backdrop of terrorism and sectarian hate, Puri’s characters go about their daily business: families bicker, people fall in and out of love, characters leave the town and are drawn irresistibly back. Stealing the limelight from her central characters—the quartet of cousins making up the book’s title—are the numerous, little delightful cameos. There is a tipsy tailor whose shirt pocket has been customised to snugly fit a half-bottle; the wedding photographer pressganged into videotaping a terrorist encounter stiltedly faked by an overbearing police officer and his camera-shy men; and the "generously proportioned" pair of Croaky and his mother, who make their social rounds on a tiny motorbike appearing to the world like "two people fitted with castors who roared into driveways and smiled pleasantly in palatial drawing rooms while their castors stayed behind".