In her free, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the range between reality and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year romantic relationship with a wedded foreigner where every phrase, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is definitely subject to her cool indifference. With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence resided entirely for someone else, and, in the bits of its aftermath, she actually is able to find it.