At eighteen, Aleksy wants to leave home and escape a family still mourning his sister. Instead, he spends the summer with his mother in the French countryside, where the months feel oppressive; then she tells him she is dying.

A memory revisited

Fourteen years later, at his psychiatrist’s suggestion, Aleksy returns to that summer in memory. The novel moves between the recollected visit and the older man’s effort to face the emotions it stirred, centering on a mother–son relationship marked by grief and estrangement.

Grief, illness, and reconciliation

The family’s loss and the mother’s illness frame a story about resentment, rejection, and the possibility of making peace. Its central tension is the difficult passage from old injuries toward reconciliation between mother and son.