One winter morning on an ordinary day in contemporary Dublin, a middle-class woman wakes up in her suburban home. Her husband is next to her in bed, her children sleeping nearby. Without thinking much about it, she walks out the front door and never comes back. She travels first by car, then train, then ferry. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and in the beds of strange men. Finally, 48 hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring, inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.

One winter morning on an ordinary day in contemporary Dublin, a middle-class woman wakes up in her suburban home. Her husband is next to her in bed, her children sleeping nearby. Without thinking much about it, she walks out the front door and never comes back. She travels first by car, then train, then ferry. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and in the beds of strange men. Finally, 48 hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring, inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.

'Jaw-droppingly good' Sinead Gleeson 'Funny, poetic, heart-chilling' Graham Norton 'Terrific' Jenny Offill 'Marvellous' Kevin Barry 'Takes your breath away' Observer 'Unlike any other fiction' Independent There once was ... a woman who loved her husband's cock so much that she began taking it to work in her lunchbox. a man who made films without a camera, which transfixed his estranged daughter. a couple who administered electric shocks to each other, to be reminded of what love is. a world where you wake up one day and notice that, one by one, people are turning blue.