A poignant and witty family drama centred on Lisa Grant, a forty-year-old journalist living in rural Gloucestershire, who is broke, alone, and teetering on the edge of a midlife crisis. The novel explores Lisa’s struggle with “emotional impotence”—her inability to express love and vulnerability—which has sabotaged her relationships, especially with Jack, the only man she truly cared for, who now lives across the Atlantic in New York. At the heart of Lisa’s difficulties is her strained relationship with her narcissistic, controlling mother, Elizabeth. Lisa’s father disappeared when she was six, and her mother kept the truth about his departure hidden for decades. After four decades of sparring with her impossible mother, Lisa cultivates a more rational and sympathetic approach to discovering why her mother lacks empathy. Believing childhood trauma may be responsible, Lisa harnesses her journalistic skills to investigate her mother’s past and is shocked by what she finds.