The novel begins with an introduction of its main protagonist, Melanie. She is a 15-year-old-girl girl, obsessed with literary romances and the idea of being married, who is starting to explore her body and her sexuality. She lives with her 12-year-old brother, Jonathon, and 5-year-old sister, Victoria. The three of them are looked after by their eccentric nanny and housekeeper, Mrs. Rundle, whilst their parents are in the United States.
One evening, Melanie feels compelled to try on her mother’s wedding dress whilst everybody else is asleep. She goes outside into the garden wearing the wedding dress, but, when she realizes she has locked herself out, she has to climb up the apple tree in the garden, ripping her dress and leaving herself naked as she enters back into her room.
The next day, when Mrs. Rundle and Melanie’s siblings are out of the house, Melanie discovers via telegram of the deaths of her parents in a plane crash over the Grand Canyon. She breaks down in tears, blaming the events of the last night for their deaths, and throws a hairbrush at her reflection in the mirror, shattering the glass.
Now that they are orphans, Melanie, Jonathon and Victoria are forced to leave Mrs. Rundle and their idyllic rural home to live with their closest blood relative. Accordingly, that October the three of them relocate to a working-class neighborhood in South London to live with their uncle, a toymaker named Philip Flower, and his mute wife, Margaret, who only communicates via a chalkboard.
When they arrive in London they are collected by Margaret’s younger brothers, Francie and Finn Jowle. They are Irish, have bright red hair, crooked teeth and wear clothes that look like “strays from a parish poor-box”. When they arrive at the house above the toyshop, Melanie is appalled by the impoverished living conditions. Margaret welcomes the three of them whilst Philip appears disinterested in their arrival, instead remaining in his workshop to craft strange, life-size puppets for one of his extraordinary puppet shows. Melanie soon learns that Margaret has been mute since the night of her wedding to Philip.
That night, Melanie wakes to hear Margaret and Finn dancing in the room next door as Francie plays the fiddle; she doesn’t know what to make of the Jowle family.
Unable to sleep properly, she creeps down to the kitchen the next morning where she encounters the younger Jowle brother, Finn. He warns her that when she meets Uncle Philip she needs to change out of her trousers and into a skirt, not put on any make-up and not speak unless he asks her a question. When Melanie and her siblings meet Uncle Philip, he appears controlling, cruel and cold. At dinner, he is rude to the rest of the family and displays a clear dislike for Finn.
Jonathon, who enjoys making model sailboats, and Victoria, who is mollycoddled by Margaret, settle into their new home with greater ease than Melanie. Across the next few days, Melanie is forced to work in the toyshop downstairs with Margaret. It is a highly eccentric shop, with a bright pink parakeet, old-fashioned toys and a strange array of customers. It seems like it belongs in the 1860s, not the 1960s.
Melanie begins to spend time with Finn, who has taken an instant attraction to her. One Wednesday afternoon, he takes her on a walk to a nearby park on the ruins of the National Exhibition of 1852. He shows her a collapsed statue of Queen Victoria who he calls “the Queen of the Waste Land”. There, Finn kisses Melanie, much to her repulsion. She beats her fists against him and pushes him away, thinking of it as “a humiliation” and not at all romantic. When she gets back to her room in the house, she finds a hole in the wall that looks into the Jowle brothers’ room. At first, she is curious about what they are doing in their room, but then she is disgusted by the realization that it is really a peephole that Finn made to spy on her in her room. She plans to confront him about this, but when she next sees Finn, he is tending to a bruise given to him by Uncle Philip and her anger at him turns into sympathy.
The next puppet show performed by Uncle Philip is about Mary, Queen of Scots and her relationship with Bothwell. When Finn fails to successfully puppeteer his character, Uncle Philip pushes him to the floor violently. He begins to vomit up blood. When Margaret runs to help Finn, Uncle Philip begins to shout at the rest of the family and storms out of the room.
From this point on, the atmosphere in the house is markedly different, with Melanie observing “The violence in the house was palpable”. The next month is unenjoyable, particularly as Finn is no longer his cheeky and rebellious self. The family do not celebrate Christmas when it comes, due to Uncle Philip’s dislike of the holiday, but they prepare for his big puppet show which is to take place on Boxing Day.
The relationship between Finn and Uncle Philip continues to be tense, especially after Finn refuses Uncle Philip's demand for him to have sex with Melanie as he believes his is one of Uncle Philip's plots.
When Uncle Philip decides that Finn is no longer fit to be a puppeteer, he comes up with the idea of Melanie performing on the stage alongside the puppets. On the day of the puppet show, Melanie is forced to put on a white dress and play the role of Leda in Uncle Philip’s retelling of the story of Jove’s rape of Leda under the disguise of a swan. The puppet show ends in disaster. Melanie is crushed under the weight of the giant swan puppet and only manages to escape when Finn forces the show to stop. Uncle Philip, blaming Melanie for the play’s failure, hits her across the face.
When Uncle Philip leaves the house on a business trip, he takes Jonathon, the only family member he does not dislike, along with him. In a fit of rage, Finn destroys the swan puppet and leaves it next to the collapsed statue of Queen Victoria in the park. Learning what he has done, Melanie confesses her love for Finn and her wish to start a family with him in the future. The house is happier whilst Uncle Philip is gone, but later that evening Melanie comes to the shocking realization that Margaret has been conducting an incestuous affair with Francie behind Uncle Philip’s back.
Upon his return, Uncle Philip’s own discovery of this affair sends him into a fit of a rage. In his frenzy, he sets the house on fire. It is at this point that Margaret speaks for the first time in the book as she shouts for Finn and Melanie to get out of the house. The novel ends with the two of them watching the house burn down, with a note of hope for their future together: “At night, in the garden, they faced each other in wild surmise.”
