When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp and humane perspective.

Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house, happy-enough daughter and an eerie sense that life might be happening elsewhere. While Thomas is suddenly faced with the daily silence of an empty house, Tonie finds herself alive to previously unimagined possibilities.

Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party.

When eighteen-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. The chance to escape once more to his friend's country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a family changed, and his own romantic notions of country life begin to disintegrate .

Encompassing memoir and cultural criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writing, this collection of essays is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold. It grants its readers a rare opportunity to see a mind at work that will influence literature for time to come.