Fairness is about Helen, the tiny, blonde, serious girl whom the narrator meets when they are both looking after children during a summer vacation in Normandy. Her adventures in search of a morally satisfying life lead her into situations that are neither satisfying nor moral, from the mining boom in Central Africa to the child abuse scandals of the late 1980s. Fairness is the latest novel in Ferdinand's Mount's Chronicle of Modern Twilight which includes The Man Who Rode Ampersand and Of Love and Asthma.