Set in the 1980s before cell phones, personal computers, and Facebook "likes," a comic tone pervades a serious landscape onto which characters attempt to bring personal meaning. The protagonist, Lucien, is a marine engineer on a Canadian tanker. While on one-month leave in Halifax, he meets Olivia, a brilliant philosophy student at Dalhousie University, who takes an immediate dislike to him. What begins as mutual antipathy changes when they discover how compatible their oddities are. Charged by Olivia not to say he loves her, Lucien returns to sea and a job characterized by its plodding predictability. When he learns from a French fortuneteller that he must "Avoid waters. Waters will kill you," he discovers not everything in his life is negotiable, including his feelings for Olivia. This is a fascinating and different work of fiction.