The book covers the experiences of Ruby Lennox, a girl from a working-class English family living in York.

Between each chapter are (non-consecutive) flashbacks that tell the story from the point of view of one of the other members of Ruby's family—including her great-grandmother Alice, her grandmother Nell and her mother Bunty.

While mostly telling the story of the family's women, several of the flashbacks vividly depict the wartime experiences of their male relatives and lovers in both World Wars.

One of these depicts the crew of a Halifax bomber on a doomed last mission over Nazi Germany - which would become a major plot element in Atkinson's 2015 novel, A God in Ruins.

A number of revelations, such as the fact that Ruby's sister Gillian dies in a road accident aged 11, are revealed to the reader long before they occur.