Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem tohave little in common.Peteris a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparentlyunassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himselfto sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very differentwomen - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whomlife is one long joke.Ivanis a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himselfas socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother.

Now,in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older womanemerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly andintensely intertwined.Fortwo grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - aperiod of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much onelife might hold inside itself without breaking.