The story of a woman's life, from childhood to death, somewhere in provincial France, from the 1950s to just shy of 2025.
She has doting parents, does well at school, finds a loving husband after one abortive attempt at passion, buys a big house with a moonlit terrace, makes decent money, has children, changes jobs, retires, grows old and dies. All in the comfort that the middle-classes have grown accustomed to.
But she's bored.
She takes up all sorts of outlets to try to make something happen in her life: adultery, charity work, esotericism, manic house-cleaning, motherhood and various hobbies - each one abandoned faster than the last. But no matter what she does, her life remains unfocussed and unfulfilled. Nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down - just like the town where she lives - the landscape is non-descript, flat, horizontal.
Sophie Divry dramatises the philosophical conflict between freedom and comfort that marks women's lives in a materialistic world. Our heroine is an endearing, contemporary Emma Bovary, and Divry's prose will remind readers of the best of Houellebecq, the cold, implacable historian who paints a precise portrait of an era and those who inhabit it and in doing so renders existence indelibly absurd.
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson




![Blake, Zoe Foster FICTION PAPERBACK New Zoe Foster Blake: Air Kisses [2009]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/blake-zoe-foster-zoe-foster-blake-air-kisses-2009-9780749007270-1203817730_{width}x.jpg?v=1762636163)
![Pearce, Aj FICTION HARDBACK AJ Pearce: Dear Mrs Bird [2018]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/pearce-aj-aj-pearce-dear-mrs-bird-2018-1203817647_{width}x.jpg?v=1762636275)
![Frayn, Michael FICTION PAPERBACK Michael Frayn: The Trick of It [2000] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/frayn-michael-michael-frayn-the-trick-of-it-2000-paperback-1203817684_{width}x.jpg?v=1762636286)
![Clark, Imogen FICTION PAPERBACK Imogen Clark: Impossible To Forget [2022] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/clark-imogen-imogen-clark-impossible-to-forget-2022-paperback-1203817698_{width}x.jpg?v=1762636404)