Naomi and Laura meet by chance at a department store café when Naomi mistakenly takes Laura’s coat. A strange magnetism is sparked during this first encounter, and eventually they form a romantic relationship and Laura moves in with Naomi. She tells Naomi little about herself, and appears to have no real life outside their relationship --- but Naomi, lonely despite her job, friends and hobbies, is convinced that their love was meant to be. As time goes by, Laura changes her appearance to resemble Naomi and soon begins to take her place in the world. In the same city, a nameless woman works for a ghostwriter, transcribing recordings of his clients recalling their lives. After hearing something on a recording that appears to be addressed to her, however, she gets the sense that she is being watched.

On a Greek island rich with ancient beauty, a lonely woman in her 30s upends the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Lust and admiration for Helena, a chic older artist, brings the book’s unnamed narrator to Ermoupoli, where Helena’s daughter, Olga, seems at first like an obstacle and a nuisance. But the unpredictable forces of ego and desire take over, leading our narrator down a more dangerous path, and causing the roles of lover and beloved, child and adult, stranger and intimate to become distorted. As the months go by, the fragile web connecting the three women nears rupture, and the ominous consequences of their entanglement loom just beyond a summer that must end.