A woman considers her possible shortcomings when her boyfriend tells her that he doesn’t like some things about her. After a period of reflection, she acknowledges the futility of self-deprecation.

A man tries to determine the cost of a passionate but brief love affair, and his calculations lead him to a solemn but hopeful realization.

A couple marry after being unfaithful to each other in a scintillating game of cat and mouse.

An American man moves to Germany and falls in love with a married Norwegian woman in his language class. Their contrasting artistic tastes foretell a fundamental rift.

A complex web of human relationships is presented in the form of an algebraic expression.

A woman who has embarked on an affair with a local married man grows worried when the manipulative girl working in her shop begins using the secret as blackmail.

Vignettes of a number of relationships, most of them troubled, are glimpsed through the descriptions of creatures in this bestiary of the imaginary.

When an English teacher learns a former student has gone on a shooting spree, she finds the story he wrote in her class, and begins to wonder if she should have seen the signs of what was to come.

A stalled novelist and his intellectual social circle wrestle with postwar malaise in the changing cultural landscape of early 1960s New York City. When one of his friends finally snaps, he races to protect him amidst smoldering racial tensions.