As she listens to Lucy through the thin walls of her dilapidated building, S.H., a.k.a. "Minnesota," transcribes her neighbor's bizarre and increasingly ominous monologues in a notebook, until one frightening night when Lucy bursts into her apartment on a rescue mission. Forty years later, S.H., now a veteran author, discovers her old notebook and a never-completed novel. Ingeniously juxtaposing the various texts, S.H. measures what she remembers against what she wrote that year and has since forgotten to create a dialogue between selves across decades.

"Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt."—Washington Post