A middle-aged teacher falls passionately in love with a young artist who came to a small English town to paint a portrait of the former school principal. But the teacher in love has a powerful wife and two children who do not want to part with him. And for the young artist, it is not love at all, but her art that comes first in life. As always, Murdoch’s new novel combines drama, humor and a premonition of impending disaster, revealing the dangerous depths of human passions.