Ragde showcases her trademark efficient storytelling skills in these 14 stories of survival strategies from everyday life. The characters we meet are recognizable, yet have a baroque quality: two girls find a dead man in a field and try to wake him up. A woman grows fat every time she finds a new man. Another woman is lying in bed, waiting for the plumber pounding on the tubes in the basement. A girl is playing “the quiet game” with a secretive old gardener. And a woman falls asleep on the roof terrace, while a child is screaming in the yard below.