Take one unabashedly neurotic American girl and put her in the dusty world of post-graduate Cambridge, where she is the only virgin on campus. Introduce her to Eugene Obello: philosopher, narcissist and cad; recipient of a grant to pursue Ego Studies. The result? The kind of twisted, compulsive, all-consuming passion that will endure separation, marriage (his), parenthood (his), and countless affairs (all his).

Her friends loathehim. Why can't she drop him? Even moving back home to Philadelphia doesn't help; nor landing a script-writing job in New York, on the hit sketch-comedy programme Taped But Proud.

Coincidentally, Eugene also moves to New York, to teach a seminar entitled 'Towards a Philosophy of the Number Two'. Cue more lusting and longing, hoping and waiting. Until a spectacular event changes everything . . .