Stepping OutThis novel opens in provincial France in the 1970s, with the eighteen year old protagonist, dressed in borrowed platform shoes and a cape, her possessions in a plastic bag, abandoning her home and schooling to move in with her lover Marco. Two passions fuel her rebellion: rage at the cruelties of family life, particularly those inflicted by and on her mother; and a deep commitment to the act of writing, in the face of all obstacles and indifference.