The Wise Children is a story about identical twin sisters, Dora and Nora, who built their careers as dancers and showgirls. The narrator of the novel is Dora and she begins the story with the day of their seventy-fifth birthday which is the present day in the plot of the novel. She talks about their father Melchior and how it is coincidentally his hundredth birthday on the same day as well. They get an invitation to his birthday party.
Dora and Nora are living together with Wheelchair, who is their father's ex-wife.
Dora talks about their past and the past of their family. Their father has a twin brother called Peregrine. Melchior's father killed their mother together with her lover and after that killed himself. He was a Shakespeare fanatic and traveled the world with his wife performing Shakespeare's plays. After their parents' deaths, Peregrine disappears and Melchior inherits his father's obsession with Shakespeare and his plastic crown.
He left Nora's and Dora's mother after impregnating her and she died when they were born. They were unofficially adopted by the woman who helped at their birth whom they call Grandma Chance. Their uncle Peregrine appears at their doorstep one day and helps Grandma Chance take care of them.
The Chance twins become dancers at a very young age and their father, who refused to accept them until they became famous, contacts them to perform together in his plays. Their father is at this point in the past married to Wheelchair, or Lady A., and has two daughters with them-Saskia and Imogen.
At one point they all travel to Hollywood to perform the Midsummer Night's Dream. There they meet Daisy, a famous actress, who is to perform together with them. Daisy is married to the man financing the play but she decides to leave him for Melchior. That is how Melchior divorces Wheelchair. With an accumulation of events both Nora and Dora are both about to marry in Hollywood, but it works out differently for them and their Grandma comes back after them to take them back home.
Grandma soon dies. Nora and Dora begin to visit Lady A. frequently and Lady A. decides to invite them to her daughters' birthday party. Both Melchior, who soon after marrying Daisy got a divorce again, and Peregrine are there as well. At this point, it is revealed to readers that Saskia and Imogen are Peregrine's daughters. Melchior decides to use the birthday party to announce that he will marry Saskia's best friend. Dora says that this was the last day they saw Peregrine and it is the day that Lady A. fell down the stairs and ended up in a wheelchair. The Chance twins were suspicious that it was her daughters who pushed Lady A. after forcing her to sign everything she owned over to them. They had no other choice but to take Lady A. home.
Back to the present, Nora and Dora got themselves and Lady A. ready and they are leaving for the party. There are a lot of people congratulating their father when they get there and he finally shows them the love they longed for after they approach to congratulate him. Peregrine loudly enters the scene.
Dora blurts out that Saskia and Imogen are not Melchior's but Peregrine's children and this fuels Lady A. to tell everything she had on her chest for a long time to Melchior. Nora and Dora approach their saddened father and he begins to dance with Nora. Dora sneaks out with Peregrine. It turns out that all the lovers she talked about previously were one person and that is Peregrine. When they return, Peregrine announces that he has a surprise for the Chance twins. He brought them two babies, identical twins, whose parentage is unclear. The Chance twins are alas to be mothers and fathers in their old age. Good thing that they come from a long-lived family.
