"A man and a woman - complete strangers by any regular measure yet, inexplicably, not strangers, too - cross paths at an exhibition opening one snowy night in upstate New York. As if in response to some pre-scripted prompt, they embark on a conversation that will alter each of them in ways neither could have anticipated. A night like any other becomes a decade like no other. Criss-crossing between the US and Aotearoa New Zealand, Claire Beynons For when words fail us | a small book of changes is a spellbinding story of tenderness and obsession, art and the imagination, fracture and repair"--Back cover.