Arturo, a thirty-five year-old aspiring writer, still lives with his family and spends his mornings playing table tennis with a friend who is much more mature than him. Meanwhile, his publisher has kept his novel "il continente fantasma" in limbo for years, preferring to promote spectacular mafia novels and offering him only ghost writing jobs. His ex-girlfriend Valentina, a thirty year-old trying to make a career in academia, believes Arturo is unrealistic. But then she too falls into the pit of illusions and frustrated expectations. What is perhaps a further illusion, a sort of "amulet" given to Valentina by Arturo, brings the two closer again.