Karen Clarke has lived a predictable, if somewhat boring, life until the summer she is twenty. Karen is just finishing up her degree as a multi-language linguist and meets Biba who seems exotic by comparison. Karen becomes totally absorbed with Biba’s seemingly carefree, bohemian lifestyle and allows herself to become immersed in that life which includes Biba’s older brother Rex. Rex and Biba’s casual lifestyle belies the underlying emotions surrounding their parents and lives growing up. Told ten years after the fateful summer, as Rex is being released from jail, the story seamlessly moves between Rex’s reassimilation into Karen, and their nine-year-old daughter’s life, and the summer when events spiraled out of control, ultimately causing Rex to go to jail and Biba to disappear from Karen’s life. The plot begins quietly, and quickly creeps up; before you realize it, you are totally immersed in Biba and Karen’s worlds. The pacing of the ending is a bit too fast and is over before you know it, but under the circumstances, that it probably all for the best.
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