His protagonists are often faded former celebrities in the worlds of sports, music or film, emotionally crippled antiheroes whose personal demons have led them to withdraw from society. Typically, in Quarrington's work, an outside agent of some sort – a young woman in "Whale Music", ghosts in "King Leary", a hurricane in "Galveston", an overtime hockey game in "Logan in Overtime" – challenges the structures of the protagonist's life and sets them on a path to moral, spiritual and personal redemption.