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A smart and sexy novel about a woman on the edge, soon to be a major film starring Penelope Cruz and Guy Pearce. Claire Newbold, whose son is dead and whose husband has had an affair, abandons her everyday life to engage in illicit and occasionally bizarre behaviour in a string of hotels, gradually coming to realisations about her identity and grief.

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Claire Newbold is not your typical heroine. Smart and sexy, yes, but she´s also been known to sneak into a hotel room or two without paying, seduce a teenager in wet bathing trunks, and just check out of things altogether - like her job. And her marriage. No wonder, though. Claire´s been careening off heartbreak. Her only child has died. On the discovery her husband has had an affair, she takes leave of absence from her everyday life, and her behaviour drifts from illicit to erratic. No longer a mother, not sure she wants to be a wife, Claire moves from hotel to hotel, basking in the anonymity of travel and forbidden sex. As she struggles to understand her marriage and her life, she surprises herself - and us - by emerging with a new sense of redemption.

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