Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character Ruth's story is told in three parts We first meet her when she is only four, and next when she is a career woman with an unsuccessful personal life The book closes five years later, when Ruth is a widow and mother, about to fall in love for the first time A multi layered love story, both ribald and erotic, it is also a novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief