The famous opening line of the novel warns of the bleak narrative to follow, "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce." Emily and Sarah Grimes are sisters who share little in terms of character but much in terms of disappointment with their lives. Emily, the more intellectual and cosmopolitan of the two, seeks love in numerous disappointing affairs and short-term relationships while Sarah, the prettier and more conventional sister, marries young and bears children to an uncouth and abusive husband. Their troubled, rootless mother, Pookie, like many Yatesian matriarchs, is likely modeled on his own mother, who was nicknamed "Dookie". The novel, beginning in the 1930s when the sisters are children and ending in the 1970s with Sarah's death, primarily revolves around Emily as the book's central character, though the book employs Yates' characteristic and seamless shifts of consciousness throughout.

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.
With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.