Walking through Central Park on a winter’s night, Barrett Meeks sees a pale, translucent light in the sky. He’s recently been dumped via text message, and a series of financial fizzles has led him to move in with his older brother, Tyler. Transfixed by the light, which catches him at a moment when he is weary of the world, Barrett can’t help but feel that something godlike has cast its eye upon him.

Months go by and, back in their not-yet-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood, Tyler and Barrett confront a series of profound crossroads. A musician, Tyler struggles to write a wedding song for his beloved Beth, who is seriously ill. Barrett watches Liz, his 50-something boss at a vintage shop, savor a relationship with a seductive man in his 20s. Turning to a variety of comforts, from the spiritual to the pharmaceutical, the characters follow dynamic and divergent paths in their search for transcendence.