A relatively young woman aged thirty. She married in her early twenties had two children. It
is winter. January and minus 14°C white frosty mist around the parked car around the spruces
the mailbox on its post but higher up the sky is blue clear the sun has come back. She has
written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true
self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death. Can passion be mistaken
for love? When Ida meets Arnold also married at a conference she impulsively invites him to
share her bed. She returns home already half-obsessed and the dissolution of her marriage and
break-up of her family pass almost without her noticing. Arnold has a more relaxed attitude
toward the affair. But neither his coolness nor the alarming talk she hears about him can
dampen her desire. When she finally has Arnold for herself all the surface niceties and
indulgences they enjoy – travel sex beers for breakfast and cocktails for dinner – can’t
sustain the sweetness of the fantasy. Their mounting jealousies and insecurities metastasize
resulting in violence and addiction. In urgent prose with layers of candid and vivid detail
Hjorth shows just how devastating love can be when it binds the wrong people.
