Books may be Mayumi Saito's greatest love and her one source of true pleasure. 41 years old, a bored wife and a dutiful mother, Mayumi's job as a librarian on a small island off the coast of New England feeds her passion for reading but does little to remedy the boredom of her days. That is, until the day she issues a library card to a shy 17 year-old boy, and swiftly succumbs to a sexual obsession that subverts the way she sees the library, her family, the island she lives on, and ultimately herself.