As a child in twentieth-century Australia, Lilian Una Singer struggles to escape a suffocating existence in the home of her tyrannical Victorian father and her elegant but ineffectual mother. Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the family’s upper crust world and influence Lilian’s upbringing.
As a grown woman, Lilian has to make difficult choices if she wants to reject the idea that her story is already fixed, written by others. Will she succeed in making her life her own, despite her parents and her environment, by triumphantly savouring every moment?