Quartet

Living in Paris with her reckless, vagabond husband Stephan, Marya is very near to being happy. She enjoys their hap-hazard existence, never questioning how he lives, never wanting to know the truth. When Stephan is suddenly imprisoned she is left penniless and alone. Taken up by a sophisticated English couple, the Heidlers, who gradually overwhelm her with their own desires, Marya finds her sense of reality slipping further and further away.Set against a background of winter-wet streets and smoke-filled cafes, Jean Rhyss first novel is both poignant and disturbingly intimate in its vivid depiction of a woman on her own.