Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. She records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother, Thomas, and eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandre finds herself falling in love for the first time.