An exquisitely written prose debut from the prize-winning poet: the poignantly understated story of a woman's life, in all its aspects: love, work, the surprise of time's passage, and the ever-widening circles of her life's recurrent themes.

An intertwining round of episodes in the life of New York writer Cynthia Zarin charts the shifting parameters of love, life, and family in writing that feels nearly fictional in its richness of scene, dialogue, and mood. Cynthia herself--now in her fifties--is the marvelous and rueful character at the center of these tales, who yearns to live in the rapidly fading New York of people like Mr. Ferri, the tailor ("a wren of a man with pins flashing in his teeth"). By the end of the book, the bewildered young woman has come to own Mary McCarthy's file cabinet, has married twice and raised two batches of children, and learned that there are some truths which no tailor can alter. Whether writing about coats she owned, vanished restaurants, a newlywed journey to Italy, or the inner life of the New Yorker staff she knew as a young woman, Cynthia shows us how persistent the past is in returning to us with entirely new lessons.