The way the author tells it, once her partner had to leave Gozo, where they live, for five days and while he was away she wrote this slim book from cover to cover.

Writing this book brought out things and strands she had inside herself, from Catalonia where she was born and educated, to Gozo where she unexpectedly ended up and where she met her partner, Tom from Sweden.

The book is the unfinished story of Amanda, always seeking to remove her and other people's masks, to try and find meaning in life.

The story is easily told. This university student coming from a stable, religious, family but finding huge problems to adapt herself, falls in love with a lecturer old enough to be her father, recently widowed, who offers her wild sex whenever they can have it.

But still she is not content, especially when he ends up on the other side of the world.

Martin, the lecturer, is not the only influence. There is also a priest who had always been a huge influence over her until at death's door he reveals he has not been chaste, when he was in the Missions in Africa. Nor did he keep the two other oaths of obedience and poverty.

One thing Amanda is decidedly against - the fake religion as lived by her family with their slavish obedience to their religious organisation, aptly named Opus Dei.

She forgives and absolves the priest as he passes away. (Note to translator: "adagio" is a musical term. It is not translated by "adage").

Life goes on but Amanda is never satisfied. She keeps running away. In a way, this is a form of suicide. "If it's up to me, I would make love all day long. Nothing else fascinates me, be it erudition, speculation, religion or whatever else. To be absolutely honest, it seems to me that the only honourable thing to do is to commit suicide. Making love is a sort of suicide."

Marta Obiols Fornell and her partner Tomas Hed run Arthall, a contemporary art gallery in Victoria, Gozo and also hold sessions of philosophy, the Gozo branch of the Philosophy Sharing Foundation.