'But what if we are all fictioneers? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? (...) Our life-stories are ours to construct as we wish, within or even against the constraints imposed by the real world...' J.M. COETZEE A writer in her late thirties retreats to Landes in France for a while, fleeing from her own suffering after the break-up of a relationship. Little by little, she finds solace in writing about the losses in her life, about her person, and about indifference and freedom, and in sharing the doubts that arise in her creative process with a 'you' whom she imagines to be on the other side of the paper. The glass eye, a self-referential element of the authorprotagonist and metaphor for pain and transcendence, also represents the literary concept of the work, a private notebook where fiction imitates and replaces a fragmented reality.