Dino is a 35-year-old painter who feels betrayed both as an artist and as a man. At this point in his life, he meets Cecilia, a 16-year-old model for painters, a girl with a peculiar psychological makeup of both woman and child, a blend of indifference and sexual maturity, a common 'female' that, in the artist's eyes, takes on the dimensions of a symbol.

Dino's jealousy of the girl, the evidence of her infidelity, his romantic relationship with this atmosphere of boredom that prevents him from painting anymore—all of this is presented by Moravia within an almost fantastical ambiance, with details that become 'suffocating'—constitute the space and style of the book.

A book that could be 'the study of a love' and its effects on the emotional world of a man who tries to neutralize the symbol of his tyranny, the sixteen-year-old girl, who with her sexual voracity does nothing but reflect his own weakness, his own internal 'inability.'

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]