Nina Riverton's world falls apart when her husband Edward leaves her for another woman after twenty years of marriage. Nina has been cocooned in her comfortable life with a house in the suburbs, two children, a Volvo and a dog, now she has to learn to cope on her own as also the children leave the nest. As her much-married friend Tessa declares; the world is full of JUNK MALE. And so it seems. The men Nina meets all have their own agenda: her ex-husband dithers, an old family friend tries to swindle her, her lovers make her pulses race - but not for long and even her father is not the man she thought he was. Nina has a brittle relationship with her mother in Paris, the elegant and cool Magda, and it is only when Nina hears her story that she learns to love her mother and to understand her own daughter better. This is a novel of relationships, damaging and healing, and how a woman in her middle years finally learns to trust herself and finds another kind of happiness.