Theresa Neges, the first-person narrator and main character of this very special novel, has her tendency to reject and negate in her last name (from Latin deny). That’s why she can’t make it so easy for us readers. Neither do you, by the way. After just a few pages we are afraid for her, and there is reason for that. Theresa has dropped out of college, somehow still lives with her boyfriend in a tiny apartment painted dark blue, is regularly thrown out of her waitressing jobs, stops taking neuroleptics and drifts away Wienmostly in the area where the Danube Canal separates the second and first districts. She is a quiet but behaviorally unusual person, equipped with a rich inner life and a very unique language, by no means humorless, without any self-pity, but knows desire.