A collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace that explore the different ways people live their lives.

A stone Madonna, masterpiece of Venetian Gothic sculpture, five centuries old, blackened and disfigured by time and weather and chemical pollution, stands high up on the facade of a church. An English conservation expert, Simon Raikes, is sent to Venice to restore her. There are mysteries about her. Why this church, which she was never designed for? Why was she not installed there until the eighteenth century and where was she before? Who was the...