Eschewing her stale life in London, one woman embarks on a journey of independence and sexual liberation on the French RivieraSeparated from her husband, and with her young son away on a camping trip, Ellen decides to flee her lonely London home, naively pursuing ';a jaunt into iniquity' along France's Mediterranean coast. But will she find the escape she longs for, or the entrapment she so deeply fears?In August Is a Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien's lyric, languid prose creates a character at once ordinary and mythic, struggling to forge her own path not as a wife, mother, mistress, or loverbut as simply, assuredly herself.