Annie and Duncan fit together naturally, though Duncan's obsession with Tucker Crowe, a reclusive singer-songwriter who stopped making music years ago, has never left much time for anything more meaningful. Annie's starting to wonder whether she's wasted fifteen years on a bad relationship. When Tucker's record company issue a version of his most famous album and Annie can't see what's good about it, Duncan finds solace in bed with somebody else - and Annie is at last liberated to throw him out. But worse is to follow for Duncan: after Annie posts a review on a fan website, she gets a response from an unlikely source, Tucker himself.