The Ridolfi are a Florentine family of long lineage and little money. It is 1955, Italy is still struggling back after the war, and the family, like its decrepit villa and farm, has seen better days. Among the Ridolfi, only the youngest, eighteen-year-old Chiara, shows anything lke vitality, but it's vitality matched with innocence—a dangerous combination, to herself and all who love her.

Beautiful but awkward, eager but diffident, Chiara tends to make rash decisions, always designed to ensure other people's happiness. She sets her heart on the bull-headed Salvatore, a brilliant young doctor from the south who resolved long ago to be emotionally dependent on no one. Stymied, she calls on her resourceful English girlfriend, Barney, to help her make the impossible match. And so ensues a comedy of errors, in which guileless lovers, with the best of intentions, considerable charm, and the kindest of instincts, succeed in making one another thoroughly and astonishingly miserable.