At almost ninety, the old woman lives alone in Turin with her elderly cat Veleno, a human-friendly feline, and with the memories of a love affair that has ended (her partner, the beloved Nora, died many years ago); she has nothing to do but keep track of the new pains in her bones, listen to the radio news of violence and catastrophes - murders, bombs in airports, droughts - and chat with her friend and coetaneous Malvina, increasingly forgetful and lost on the crowded paths of dementia. The old woman is definitely tired of living, tired 'like an old cemetery earthworm', but luckily in her day there is Gabriela, a lump of hard-working youth from Eastern Europe who has survived a ramshackle family odyssey. And in Gabriela's life, besides a string of terrible relatives trying to extort as much money from her as possible, there is her cousin Dorin, a would-be terrorist actively engaged in terrorising her, Gabriela, who refuses to marry him.

In a constant loving dialogue with death (she has even tried to die on command, like the Eastern sages, but failed), the old woman is still full of energy, and takes care of what love remains to her: the decrepit Veleno and her fading friend, who has meanwhile been deported by her snake-like relatives to a rest home. And when dark threats loom over Gabriela, the arthritic old lioness doesn't think twice about unleashing her claws to defend what is dear to her