The fifteen-year-old narrator crosses the Mekong River by ferry, wearing secondhand clothes and a man's hat.

A wealthy Chinese man watches the narrator from his limousine as the ferry docks.

The Chinese man approaches the narrator on the ferry deck and offers to drive her to her boarding school.

The man drives the narrator daily between her boarding school and the French high school in his limousine.

On a school half-day, the man takes the narrator to his affluent Saigon home for the first time.

The narrator and the man have sex for the first time in his home.

The narrator tells the man she desires him for his wealth, not love, after their first sexual encounter.

The lover begins taking the narrator's family to expensive dinners, which the family accepts while refusing to acknowledge him.

The narrator's mother accuses her of sleeping with the lover and beats her privately.

The lover's father forbids him to marry the narrator and orders him to break off all contact with her.

Saigon gossips about the narrator's affair, and the women of the colonial society completely ostracize her.

The narrator boards a boat departing Saigon for France while the lover watches silently from his limousine on the shore.

The narrator learns of her younger brother's death during World War II.

The narrator's mother visits the narrator and her son in France, but the narrator notes there is nothing left to reunite between them.

The lover calls the narrator in Paris years later with his new wife present and confesses he still loves her and always will.

A fifteen-year-old French girl crosses the Mekong River by ferry and meets a wealthy Chinese man who begins driving her around Saigon, setting the affair in motion. The two become lovers, and the narrator is frank with him about her motives: she desires his wealth, not his love. The affair draws in her family through expensive dinners while simultaneously destroying her reputation in colonial society. As the lover's father applies pressure and Saigon's women ostracize the narrator, she prepares to leave for France, departing while the lover watches silently from his car. Decades later, the narrator navigates loss in France, including the death of her younger brother during the war and the fading of her mother. The novel closes when the lover, now long married, calls the narrator in Paris and confesses that his love for her has never ended.

The core love affair and its aftermath in colonial Saigon.

The narrator's mother expresses pride at the narrator's frugal but sensual appearance on the morning of the ferry crossing.

The narrator considers getting into the Chinese man's limousine her first act of true independence from her family.

After their first sexual encounter, the narrator and her lover dine alone together at an expensive Chinese restaurant in Saigon.

In public with her family, the narrator refuses to speak to or acknowledge the lover, following her elder brother's example.

The elder brother listens silently through the door as the narrator's mother beats the narrator over the affair.

The vice-principal of the narrator's boarding school formally questions her about her relationship with the Chinese man.

The narrator's mother publicly defends her daughter's freedom to the vice-principal, contradicting her own private disapproval.

The narrator describes her intense, consuming desire for her beautiful and sincere boarding school friend Hélène Lagonelle.

Hélène Lagonelle is taken away by her family to be arranged into a marriage, and the narrator never speaks to her again.

A local madwoman chases the narrator through the streets of Saigon one evening, filling the narrator with deep fear.

The elder brother's long pattern of opium addiction, theft, and lifelong financial dependence on their mother is described.

The narrator's mother dies after a lifetime spent protecting and enabling her abusive and dependent eldest son.

The elder brother is found dead and is buried alongside their mother in the same grave, as she had requested.

The narrator describes her postwar friendships in Paris with wealthy society women Marie-Claude Carpenter and Betty Fernandez.

The narrator learns that the lover was married to a Chinese heiress chosen by his father after she left Saigon.

Even before the affair begins, the narrator's mother signals her contradictory values by taking pride in her daughter's sensual, frugal appearance on the morning of the ferry crossing. As the relationship deepens, the narrator navigates its social fallout with deliberate detachment, refusing to acknowledge the lover in public while her elder brother eavesdrops on their mother's violent response at home. Friendships in the boarding school, including a charged bond with the beautiful Hélène Lagonelle, show the narrator's desire for connection outside her family's control. The affair's legacy extends well beyond Saigon: her mother and elder brother both die in France, defined by the same patterns of dependency and control that shaped the narrator's youth. The narrator eventually builds a respectable life in Paris, and only learns secondhand that after she left, the lover was married off to a Chinese heiress by his father.

Scandal, supporting characters, and the long consequences of leaving Saigon.

The narrator reflects that the ferry image is her favorite self-image because it captures the last moment before experience aged her face.

The narrator reveals she has always wanted to be a writer and has never before written about this period of her life.

The narrator's mother's deep, undiagnosed depression is identified as having shaped the family's emotional and financial trajectory.

In the man's car, the narrator realizes she can manipulate his love to escape the school bus and gain material advantages.

The man describes his powerful, wealthy father, and the narrator immediately suspects the father will forbid any lasting relationship.

The man confesses he loves the narrator to distraction and accepts that she may never be able to love him equally.

After their first sexual encounter, the narrator notices the slatted bedroom windows that offer almost no separation from the street outside.

The narrator confesses to the lover that reaching her mother's worst expectation for her feels, unexpectedly, like a relief.

The narrator realizes she is the only person her controlling elder brother is truly afraid of, granting her a freedom he denies the others.

The narrator's mother warns her that the ongoing affair means she will never be able to marry a man in the colonies.

The narrator reflects that her only deep fear is of going mad, as colonial poverty and rigid social structures have destroyed other women around her.

The narrator sides with the lover's father and refuses to stay with the lover, giving him no reason for her decision.

The narrator weeps privately on the departing boat, acknowledging feelings for the lover she had kept hidden throughout the affair.

The narrator reflects that the only person she has ever truly loved was her younger brother, not the lover.

The narrator reflects on having achieved the financial independence and respectable Parisian life she dreamed of during her impoverished childhood in Saigon.

From the outset, the narrator frames the ferry crossing as a threshold moment — the last image of herself before experience permanently altered her face and inner life. As she enters the affair deliberately and with clear-eyed calculation, small revelations accumulate: the man's trembling desire, the porous bedroom windows that collapse the boundary between private and public, and the unexpected relief of finally meeting her mother's worst fears. The narrator's recognition that she alone is exempt from her brother's psychological control gives her the freedom to act, while the affair's destruction of her colonial reputation forces her to confront what kind of woman she intends to become. Her departure is shadowed by grief she keeps hidden, and the losses of the war years force her to acknowledge that her deepest love was always for her younger brother, not the lover. By the novel's end, the narrator has achieved precisely the financial independence and self-determined life she had longed for as a poor girl in Saigon.

Hidden fears, key decisions, and moments of self-discovery across the narrator's life.