Oxygen

During the summer of 1997, the year of the comet, four people reach a turning point : Alice Valentine, who lies gravely ill in her West Country home ; her younger son, still searching for a sense of direction ; his brother, fighting to keep his acting career and marriage afloat ; and Laszlo Lazar, who leads a charmed life of exile in Paris yet is plagued by his memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. For each the time has corne to assess what matters in life, to grapple with sex, love, morality and destiny. And all will take part in an act of liberation - though not necessarily w the one foreseen.