A university lecturer invites his favourite author to give a lecture in his provincial university. She attends and they begin a relationship which will allows him to glimpse into her way of creating a novel. It is written as an epistolary novel, in which we only have access to the letters which the lecturer writes to a colleague who lives in Australia telling him about his relationship with the female author. It is a satire about the work of critics and researchers and their envious attitude towards writers. The main character, the lecturer, is a pathetic individual who wants the writer to write about him and who wants to control her and her literary creations. The female writer is only seen through his eyes and is described as a very determinate woman who has lived a richer life than him,. Although she gives up quite a lot of things to be with him he describes her as quite uncaring and mainly focused on her work. Frayn shows that he knows how to craft well a novel, his technique is excellent. Nevertheless this one is it not as impressive or interesting as Spies. ( )