Ella is a woman deeply affected by the confusion of her parents' catastrophic relationship – her father was a homosexual, her mother, who only understood this after their marriage had taken place, was disappointed and embittered. Emotionally and physically displaced, she manages to make a life for herself in France as an academic in a minor university where she is permanently at odds with her colleagues and their smug conceptions of English and French identity. Then suddenly, despite a chronic inability to commit herself, and a near-paralysis in the face of emotional opportunity, she stumbles into a relationship with Max who turns out to be equally damaged by his childhood. It's a relationship doomed to failure that somehow manages not to fail Clever, and witty in an enjoyably understated way, Helen Mundler's novel is both a determinedly honest account of a struggle for identity in the face of emotional inarticulacy, and an engaging portrait of a personality in the process of repairing itself from damage inflicted in childhood. Engrossing, often surprising, it's a revelatory read.