Hester is a brilliant, witty, and sharp-tongued seventy-one year old concert pianist in the midst of a bitter divorce from her equally renowned and ill-tempered violinist husband, Arthur Donovan. The Donovan’s are a family of troubled prima donnas: Paul, their oldest child, is a top-notch cellist, but also neurotic and unstable; Caitlin is a world-class literary critic and teacher, but suffers from a lack of the musical talent the rest of the family possesses in spades; and Jeremy, the precocious and sensitive middle child, now dead, having taken his own life some years ago. When Hester decides to rent out the attic apartment in her house to a vulnerable young man with ample problems of his own, she unwittingly exposes all the old wounds and grievances in her entire family, and the result is a month of anguish and heartache, ugly open warfare and painful, revealing memories. But through it all, her budding friendship with Alex slowly allows her to come to terms with herself and her family, and provides her the strength to fix what she can, and open her heart once again to love.