The story is about Keats, a tight-rope walker, and the narrator, a woman. Keats is a performer in crisis, restlessly awaiting inspiration. The woman is confused by their meetings, striving to make sense of the fragments of information he has given her about himself. Keats point-of-view is told in the third person, in the second part of the book, making it, as it were, a closed chapter to the narrator. The basic theme of the book is a question: whether it is possible ever to know another person. The story as such, with its meanders, impasses and blanks, may be read as an allegory of love.

The story is about Keats, a tight-rope walker, and the narrator, a woman. Keats is a performer in crisis, restlessly awaiting inspiration. The woman is confused by their meetings, striving to make sense of the fragments of information he has given her about himself. Keats point-of-view is told in the third person, in the second part of the book, making it, as it were, a closed chapter to the narrator. The basic theme of the book is a question: whether it is possible ever to know another person. The story as such, with its meanders, impasses and blanks, may be read as an allegory of love.

This is the portrait of an unusual woman and a memoir of an already distant era, brought alive again by her story. Her two identities are tied to Italy before the Second World War and to post-war Britain. Paulina D'Offizi is full of contradictions as her life was full of contrasts. Her story emerges through digressions and various points-of-view. She is a domineering woman and a demanding mother, to whom her child means the whole world. And the world is full of disappointments and unexpected twists of fate.

This is the portrait of an unusual woman and a memoir of an already distant era, brought alive again by her story. Her two identities are tied to Italy before the Second World War and to post-war Britain. Paulina D'Offizi is full of contradictions as her life was full of contrasts. Her story emerges through digressions and various points-of-view. She is a domineering woman and a demanding mother, to whom her child means the whole world. And the world is full of disappointments and unexpected twists of fate.