Plot summary

Louise, an aging woman, is coming down with cancer. Her husband Nat is having an affair with another woman. Meanwhile, Walter, partner of Louise and Nat's son Danny, has cyber sex and phone sex

Phone sex

Phone sex is a type of virtual sex that refers to sexually explicit conversation between or other persons via telephone, especially when at least one of the participants masturbates or engages in sexual fantasy...

 with other men. April, Danny's sister, visits her brother in suburban New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

. With their mother's death looming, they all fly to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 where their parents live. To avoid a funeral, Nat throws a lukewarm farewell party. April ends up fighting with her father over his cheating on her mother. Two months later, Nat is publicly seeing his mistress. Danny and Walter invite April and Nat to stay with them at a rented cottage on Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

. The final part is an prolepsis

Prolepsis

Prolepsis may refer to:* Flashforward, in storytelling, an interjected scene that takes the narrative forward* Prolepsis , 1975 work by Arrogance...

 to Louise's conversion at Catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

 although she is a Jew.

Characters

• Louise Gold
• Nat Cooper, Louise's husband.
• Xavier, one of Louise's first lovers; a fortyish sailor.
• Tommy Burns, one of Louise's first lovers; a WASP
  WAsP
  WAsP is a PC program for predicting wind climates, wind resources, and power productions from wind turbines and wind farms. The predictions are based on wind data measured at stations in the same region. The program includes a complex terrain flow model, a roughness change model, and a model for...
  
  ish young man.
• April, Louise and Nat's lesbian feminist daughter.
• Joey Conway, one of April's ex-boyfriends.
• Karl Mathias, one of April's ex-boyfriends.
• Tina Tompkins, April's manager.
• Mary McLaughlin, a lesbian singer who works with April at one point.
• Danny, Louise and Nat's gay
  Gay
  Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
  
  son.
• Walter, Danny's partner.
• Eleanor, Louise's sister.
• Cousin Joanne
• Jaime Delgado, a burnt patient. His mother is called Dorell, his father Jesus.