Stephen Faulds narrates Ian's fall from grace and Maureen's descent into mental illness in a lyrical style reminiscent of Australian writer Tim Winton. In Ian's Story, the reader finds a man who is troubled by life, who attempts to find solace in his writing, reading, spirituality, his best friend, and the woman he describes as his "soul mate." Told from many points of view, the characters are humanly flawed, with raw emotions and tragic failings clearly depicted. As in Landscape, Faulds has a knack of getting to the core of his characters' motivations and desires and paints a portrait of each one into the mind of the reader. Faulds is more than a writer; he is an artist as well, using the backdrops of the environment to illustrate the actions of his characters.