How does one continue to live when the death sentence seems to be lifted? The English widow Joyce Beddoes is suffering from liver cancer and flies to Switzerland with her alcoholic daughter to die there with dignity. However, at the last moment, she refuses the lethal poison and leaves the hospice. She wanders through Zurich, and as she distances herself more and more from her daughter, she begins to feel better day by day. When the doctors can no longer detect the tumor, the members of a Catholic community believe in a miracle. But the better her physical condition becomes, the more resolutely Joyce rejects this gift of life. Will Self, a brilliant chronicler of the neuroses of our time, tells the story of a woman for whom the ubiquitous search for meaning becomes a farce in an extreme situation.