I wanted to write about paintings, but I wasn't seen as someone who could say something interesting about art. Before meeting my husband, I had mopped the floors of those galleries, over and over. I had scrubbed the walls until my palms were rough and dry.

In a ghostly, undefined era and place, a cleaning woman at a museum of art aspires to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labour but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?

Indelicacy is an exquisite gem of a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one's true calling.