The story, which is set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the s, centers on the lives of five doomed sisters, the Lisbon girls. The novel is written in first person plural from the perspective of an anonymous group of teenage boys who struggle to find an explanation for the Lisbons' deaths. The novel was adapted into a movie by director Sofia Coppola , starring Kirsten Dunst. As an ambulance arrives for the body of Mary Lisbon, the last Lisbon sister to die, a group of anonymous adolescent neighborhood boys recalls the events leading up to her death.
The father, Ronald Lisbon, is a math teacher at the local high school. The mother is a strict homemaker. The family has five blonde teenage daughters: year-old Cecilia, year-old Lux, year-old Bonnie, year-old Mary, and year-old Therese. Without warning, Cecilia attempts suicide by slitting her wrists in the bathtub. However, she is found in time by a neighborhood boy who had snuck into the home, and survives.
Cecilia's psychologist at the hospital suggests that the girls need more social interaction and that the potential cause of Cecilia's suicide attempt was the suppression of her libidinal urges.
The parents allow the girls to throw a chaperoned party at their house in hopes of cheering Cecilia up. However, Cecilia excuses herself from the party, which is happening in the basement, and goes upstairs and jumps out of her second-story bedroom window. Cecilia is impaled on the fence post below, and she dies almost immediately. The Lisbon parents, particularly Mrs. Lisbon, begin to watch their four remaining daughters more closely, further isolating the family from their community.
Cecilia's death also heightens the air of mystery about the Lisbon sisters to the neighborhood boys, who long for more insight into the girls' lives. When school begins in the fall, Lux begins a secret romance with the local heartthrob, Trip Fontaine. Trip negotiates with the overprotective Mr. Lisbon to take Lux to the homecoming dance , on the condition that he find dates for the other three sisters as well.
