See the Old Lady Decently is, and will probably always remain, something of a problematic book in a variety of different ways. First and foremost, it is known (when it is known at all) as B. S. Johnson's last work, yet was intended as the first volume of a projected trilogy, which remained tantalisingly incomplete. The basis of the core material is itself fairly straightforward: events, both actual and imaginary in the lives of Johnson's own parents in the years and months that lead up to his birth, and additionally the decay and death of both his mother and of his mother country, culminating in an eventual and hard won sense of regeneration and renewal. The authorial deployment of these events, however, is far from straightforward, while the manner in which Johnson chose to order and reveal his narrative (or non-linear narrative) is commendably courageous and personal in its attempts to progress beyond the merely chronological and sequential, the well-trodden path of convention.