Set in the winter garden of a chateau in the spring of 1912, "Ring Round the Moon" has only a trifle of a plot, but what there is defies easy summary.

Mr. Berney's plots defy summary.

One branch leads to the "classified documents" on Deutch's computer while the other tracks the official response to the discovery, a complex, detailed account of who said what to whom that defies easy summary or firm judgment.

"Indeed, Li'l Abner incorporates such a panoply of characters and ideas that it defies summary," according to cultural historian Anthony Harkins.

His novels, too, defy summary, because they are not at all plotty and their structure is so subtle it is hardly apparent.

It's a rhetorical question, of course, but the problems of "National Security" are extensive enough to defy summary in the available space.

The narrative structure, never simple, has grown so convoluted as to defy brief summary.

We are left with a mass of facts, suspicions, hypotheses and proliferating subplots, which defies easy summary; but I think it is fair to say that Mr. Costello has three basic contentions.

The typically knotty story defies simple summary: a tyrant king covets his wife's brother's wife and begins a frivolous war; the brother and sister, through their devotion and fidelity, usher in an era of understanding.

The lyrics are often fragmentary and associative, defying summary yet full of epiphanies.