The entire first part of this novel is a false gateway: we read the story of a young couple who meet one day at church, get married, and go off to live in one of the idyllic suburbs where they will lead the life that every middle-class couple has dreamed of, with a little garden, children, and apple pies on Sunday afternoons. But this is a book by Chris Kraus (New York, 1955), one of the symbols of American counterculture, the author of I love Dick, a 1997 novel that is today considered one of the most important feminist novels, and therefore things cannot go on like this for long. There are signs for the attentive reader: the second daughter is born with a cognitive problem, the neighbors are more hostile than one would expect, and the father's jobs keep closing down. Suddenly, this grand overview focuses on a single character: Catherine, the eldest daughter, who will flee from this very uptight family as soon as she can. That is when the novel takes a leap, which will only be the first of many.