Since their teenage years, Kate and Zoe have been top competitors in speed cycling, a sport in which you have to risk everything, forget about your normal life, and beat the best competitors in the world with a body free of fat and strict diets. Only a hundredth of a second separates triumph and disappointment. The novel by English writer Chris Cleave is an example of exceptional modern writing, which asks the reader a cruel question: What would you sacrifice for the people you love? In Cleave's case, modernity is universal: Kate and Zoe are like modern Amazons, eager for career success, but deep down they want to fill the emptiness that gapes in modern man: the need for love.