When factory owner Bernard Morton fires him from his first job, Harry Glass protests by impulsively going off with Morton's car and the intriguing Mrs Morton. Shocked out of the life she has been living, Mrs Morton forms a bond with Harry as they are pursued from one city to another with the Morton brothers in pursuit. Bernard wants his wife back; Norman is more concerned with the contents of a briefcase left in the car boot. When Harry and Mrs Morton are given shelter in a remote house in the Highlands, it seems they have found refuge. But by the time the Morton brothers find them they have been caught up in a world of sexual perversity and fantasy.

My Life as a Man begins with a nation in the grip of anti-war fever, and ends with an old man's discovery that life can still surprise him.