Foreign bodies - Cynthia Ozick

The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale's life,
leaving her middle-aged and alone, teaching in an impoverished borough
of 1950s New York. A plea from her estranged brother gives Bea the
excuse to escape lassitude by leaving for Paris to retrieve a nephew she
barely knows; but the siren call of Europe threatens to deafen Bea to
the dangers of entangling herself in the lives of her brother's family. By one of America's great living writers, Foreign Bodies
is a truly virtuosic novel. The story of Bea's travails on the
continent is a fierce and heartbreaking insight into the curious nature
of love: how it can be commanded and abused; earned and cherished; or
even lost altogether.