There are three stories: two featuring alienated Americans attempting, but not succeeding, to adjust to contemporary Paris, and one offbeat coming-of-age tale set in Montana. In The Womanizer, businessman Martin Austin attempts to establish an affair with an attractive French divorcée, only to destroy his chances first with his wife at home, and then with this would-be lover. In Occidentals, college teacher and first-novelist Charley Matthews is in Paris with his older lover, trying to meet the would-be translator of his book for a French publisher while being cautious to avoid his mistresss Ugly-Americans-in-Paris friends. Perhaps the collections strongest, Jealous, is the story of a 17-year-old who leaves his father with his attractive but erratic Aunt Doris to visit his estranged mother in Seattle.