An overworked father hits his daughter and asks her not to tell anyone about it. A sixteen-year-old girl sneaks into someone's house. A young woman has bruises on her body and she can't decide if it's good for her or not. A man travels with his wife to South America to adopt a little boy, but he would prefer to bring home one of the little girls living in the orphanage, who is too old to be adopted.

The stories in Marie Aubert's collection of short stories are about people who are about to break out: from friendship, marriage and other relationships - her characters would escape from social loneliness. They are all doing something they are ashamed of while clinging to the idea that they are acting for some greater good.

In the Norwegian author's nine stories, desire and shamelessness are separated from sin by a hair.

He disappears between our meetings, doesn't text or call, days pass, even a whole week. Cecilie and the others tell me to remember that she has children and a lot of work, but I don't understand, I can't understand it, impatience stings and tightens my chest, it's as if she's moved inside me and I'm looking through her out of myself, it's like a song that's in my head all day long from when I wake up to when I go to bed and everything gets out of hand and in the middle of emails I forget what I wanted to write and when I'm talking to someone I usually lose the thread.

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