 Echoes of Dostoyevsky. At the start, Christine Blanc is a temp, her boyfriend has gone. Near the story s end, she s been offered a steady job, she has a fiancé, other men seem interested in her, she s passed her driving test, and, after she wins 1000 Euros in a scratch-off, her colleagues sing that she s a jolly good fellow ("one of us"). But something s askew: her gaze is too direct, her eyes open too widely; conversational gambits hit odd notes; she parrots others  words; she cooks too much food when she invites a supervisor to dinner. When the supervisor takes Christine on a spontaneous outing that disorients her, her oddities become something else. Can things ever be normal?