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.

Richard Yates (February 3, 1926 – November 7, 1992) was an American novelist and short story writer. He was a chronicler of mid-20th century mainstream American life, often cited as artistically residing somewhere between J.D. Salinger and John Cheever. He is regarded as the foremost novelist of the post-WWII Age of Anxiety.