Elisa and Gilles are happy, with clearly defined roles. For Elisa, love means being a wife. They live with their small twin daughters in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of an industrial town, and every evening Elisa eagerly awaits her husband. However, it is her younger sister Victorine who captures Gilles's attention. Elisa, who is heavily pregnant, quickly realizes this, accepts his infidelity, humiliates herself, and even becomes an accomplice to his desires, until Victorine leaves him. When Elisa finally understands that she no longer loves Gilles, she surrenders. A masterful novel about the destructive power of absolute love.