A short novel about Laurence, a successful woman in Paris in the 1960s who works in advertising and lives in comfortable, fashionable surroundings. Her family and friends seem content, yet she begins to feel uneasy about the empty phrases and polished images that make up their world. Questions from her young daughter about suffering and the future sharpen her doubts. The book is a quiet critique of affluence, conformity and the way modern life can dull moral attention.