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



![John Banville: Birchwood [2024] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/9781335928450_{width}x.jpg?v=1782329144)
![John Banville: Kepler [2024] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/9781335653079_{width}x.jpg?v=1782323875)

![Mullin, Chris FICTION PAPERBACK Chris Mullin: The Friends of Harry Perkins [2020]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/mullin-chris-chris-mullin-the-friends-of-harry-perkins-2020-1245669066_{width}x.jpg?v=1782158018)
![Binchy, Maeve IRISH FICTION Maeve Binchy: Dublin 4 [2006]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/binchy-maeve-maeve-binchy-dublin-4-2006-1245669058_{width}x.jpg?v=1782158049)