“Could it be that the meaning of our life on earth is not the perpetual progress towards some indeterminate goal – the design and production of ever more powerful technologies, the development of increasingly complex and obscure forms of culture? Could all these things emerge and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same: to live and coexist with other people?” 

Alice is a young writer who grew up in Dublin. She lives in New York for a few years and then, as part of her recovery from a nervous breakdown, decides to move to a beautiful house in the Irish countryside, a place from which most people seek to leave. There she meets her peer Felix, who is bored working in a warehouse, and soon suggests he accompany her to Rome, where she will travel to promote the Italian translation of her book. Meanwhile, in Dublin, her best friend Eileen works at a literary magazine, earns little money, tries to get over her breakup, and flirts with her childhood friend Simon. 

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are all around thirty – but they feel that life is slowly passing them by. They fall in love, demystify one life myth after another, come together and break apart again. They wonder about love, sex, friendship, the definition and meaning of success, and how one can hope for the best in an often desperate and despairing world. Could they perhaps be in the last bright room of the world before darkness falls forever? Are they perhaps witnessing some great change? Will they find a way to believe that there truly is a beautiful world?