Mia Fredrickson, the wry, vituperative, tragic comic, poet narrator of The Summer Without Men, has been forced to reexamine her own life. One day, out of the blue, after thirty years of marriage, Mia´s husband, a renowned neuroscientist, asks her for a pause. This abrupt request sends her reeling and lands her in a psychiatric ward. There are tragedies and there are comedies. And they are often more the same than different, rather like men and women.