Distraught after the death of Pinky voice of Jackie Weaver , the only friend she has ever known, Grace Sarah Snook sits in a garden recounting her life to a beloved snail named Sylvia.
Grace shares about the loss of her mother who died giving birth to her and her twin brother Gilbert Kodi Smit-McPhee , the bullying she endured and how her brother was her champion and protector.
She shares how her father Percy Dominique Pinon became a paraplegic and later an alcoholic, and how, for all his faults, he gave them one perfect day before he died. She also tells Sylvia about how social services sent her to Canberra and Gilbert to a family cult in Perth.
She recounts the hardships of growing up and the difficulties she endured as she faced life all alone. She shares about her failed marriage to Ken Tony Armstrong the microwave repairman, and the betrayal she endured when she thought she had finally found love.
When Pinky finally dies, Grace is seen to be utterly broken by the loss and the weight of all she has endured. Seeing no reason to go on, she begins to eat snail poison but in a moment of clarity she realises what Pinky had been trying to give her and she slowly begins to turn her life around and soon comes to realise that she is not alone after all. Death; separation from parents and siblings; bullying; cults and religious fanaticism; suicide; betrayal; loneliness; hoarding.
