'In a coastal village in Cork in 1969, a Russian painter and his Irish novelist wife write letters to one another as they try to come to terms with a fatal illness. On Australia's west coast in 2011, a bookseller writes to her estranged partner in an attempt to understand what has happened to their relationship. In Bournemouth in 1948, a retired English doctor writes letters to the love of his life, a German artist he lived with In the Vienna during the 1930s. The simple three domestic lives of these three couples are set against conversations about intimacy, art, war and loss.' (Publisher's blurb)