Klara moves to a small town with his mother after the parents divorced. She feels alienated unable to make friends. Most of the girls in her class likes to ride and to get closer to them, Klara lies about being an experienced rider.

About the Swedish author Agnes Von Krusenstjerna during the period of her marriage to David Sprengel. In the hallucinatory opening sequence she is brought in a straitjacket by her husband and two psychiatric nurses through the Venice Carnival nocturnal antics to a mental hospital in the city. With her is a manuscript of her autobiography, which she calls "her child". The book is Agnes showdown with her family, and in flashbacks presented, Agnes progress from the author of innocent girls' books to serious and self-consuming novelist.