On a cold bright day, fifteen year old Adriana Dunea wakes up to find that her world has transformed overnight. Her parents irritate her, school is a bore and her body is changing in ways she does not understand. As the seasons turn, she grows into a beautiful young woman, forges new friendships and falls in and out of love. Yet her days spent dreaming of romance and listening to the latest gramophone records in her provincial town swiftly come to an end when the sudden opportunity arises to move to Bucharest.

Seduced by the charms of the 'Little Paris of the East', a chance encounter with the hot-headed composer Cello Viorin tests her attachment to her longstanding sweetheart, Gelu. In this witty, lyrical coming-of-age novel, Mihail Sebastian sensitively charts his heroine's journey of self-awakening as she discovers the limits of her freedom and strives to shape her identity as a woman.