In the hottest summer in living memory, Judith Flatland, together with her two children, leaves Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts to follow her husband, Jordan, to Paris, where he is about to finalise a high-profile business deal. Bored with her role as corporate wife, conscious of her age and suddenly aware that she has become sexually invisible, forty-two-year-old Judith feels jealous of and threatened by her nubile daughter. Has life passed her by? Cheating on her marriage and unable to help herself, Judith is drawn into a passionate affair with Felix Dumoulin, an urbane young artist. And so, what begins as curiosity on her part leads to a poignant denouement: Judith must choose between her husband and her lover.
