Alone in a Helsinki cafe, Anna, a young journalist, spends a day drinking coffee and reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The novel, a gift from her professor and now lover, an American named Ian, becomes a lens through which Anna can view her own life. Compelling and poignant, the narrative floats in and out of geography and time, as Elina Hirvonen deftly intertwines the splintered childhood of Anna and her mentally ill brother with the troubled past of Ian and his father, a Vietnam vet. Finnish protests against the American invasion of Iraq provide the contemporary backdrop and portray the post-September 11, anti-American perspective.