Alfredo is thirty, runs a library in downtown Milan and loves the blues. Full of phobias, hyper-allergic and maybe even radioactive, he is terrified by Nietzsche and the visitors who ask to take out Adrian’s Memoirs: the famous Brazilian soccer player’s autobiography. A would-be ecologist, Alfredo’s only means of transport is his car, an ancient, highly polluting Ford. He wants a kid, but doesn’t want to be a father. He honours his father even though he steals his girlfriends. As restless as Roth’s Zuckerman and as self-indulgent as Richler’s Barney, Alfredo is tormented by the thought of three women he’d like to get in bed, but with whom he traps himself in apparently dead-end relationships: Nena, his eccentric ex-schoolmate with multiple personalities will reveal a tragic past; Madeleine, his ex-long-term fiancée intent on her career, slams down the phone in his face after every conversation; his colleague Anna, a fascinating and mysterious Moldavian, knocks him off his feet. Meanwhile, unexplainable disappearances and strange anonymous messages on the car windshield amplify Alfredo’s fears while in a sub-plot, his immediate family survives every eccentricity of its members only to collapse from the identity crisis of Arthur’s father, a 60 year old aesthete, woman-chaser and tobacco addict. Alfredo understands that he must absolutely get out of the impasse of his life and undertake the path to rebirth. He is not alone. Some of the characters accompany him on this voyage: his friend Dave, a woman-fearing surfer; old, stateless Kanakis, who mistreats dogs but pampers widows; the assistant librarian Lucio, a passionate jazz musician; Leibniz, once a lawyer, now a beggar; Karl, the rigid but illuminated university prof engaged to Nena. Thanks to them, Alfredo will find the lucidity and courage to face every crisis, every loss, every enigma and, finally, «crosses the street» to the opposite sidewalk to reach the woman he really loves.