Sylvia Bolfe sits in her nursing home, criticizes the food and the staff—all but her trusted confidant and registered nurse, Eleanor—and with humour and feistiness recounts her turbulent life. From an upper-class Irish family, Sylvia marries a young medical student beneath her station and leaves Ireland for Newfoundland. When her husband unexpectedly dies, she is left with the children to make her own way. As in Atwood's The Blind Assassin, Evans spins a spirited, funny, no-nonsense narrative in the voice of an unforgettable narrator.