Claire Markham’s life collapses nearly unexpectedly. When her marriage to Kurt begins to get crushed below the burden of emotional conflicts, she sees therapist Alec McPherson and falls in love with him. However Alec is a married man with youngsters and has no plans to go away his spouse. Claire now finds herself a single mother, separated from Kurt and dumped by Alec. And to make issues worse, her mom out of the blue dies, an occasion that crystallizes Claire’s time of despair, a despondency poignantly depicted by Disigny. However Claire is given a possibility for a reprieve from her troubles. She is an artwork historical past professor, and one among her college students, the fabulously rich Viv Chancey, pays her to function a non-public artwork teacher on a European tour that features Milan, Venice, and Paris. Viv anticipates the journey with “unbridled pleasure,” and Claire views it with “paralyzing doubts.” The journey is fraught with difficulties—Viv just isn’t all that excited about artwork and appears saddled by her circle of relatives struggles and a devastating nervousness, although she is reluctant to candidly focus on both. The creator’s command of the historical past of European artwork is formidable, and readers are handled to an impressively astute tour of it. As well as, the plot is as eventful as it’s companionably candy and maintains a buoyantly brisk tempo. However the novel is overflowing with most of the clichés of the modern bildungsroman—Claire’s trajectory to self-realization and emotional closure is timeworn. Nonetheless, readers in the hunt for one thing each simply digestible and clever—particularly one thing brimming with inventive insights—will discover this story satisfying.