Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, & darkly observant. A college student & aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful & endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend & comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home & tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult & unhappy father, & finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires & vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful & disorienting way of living from moment to moment.