This novel opens in provincial France in the 1970s, with the eighteen-year-old protagonist, dressed in borrowed platform shoes and a cape, her possessions in a plastic bag, abandoning her home and schooling, to move in with her lover Marco. Two passions fuel her rebellion: rage at the cruelties of family life, particularly those inflicted by and on her mother; and a deep commitment to the act of writing, in the face of all obstacles and indifference. Stepping Out is a portrait of the artist as a young woman, written with Rey's characteristic combination of indignation, frankness and humour, as much a dramatisation of the conflicts that have shaped her as a writer, as a testament for the generation that follows.