Kit is the novel’s protagonist and the author of the single first-person narrative, the eponymous “maid’s diary.” The narrative follows her experiences more or less chronologically, from her teenage years into adulthood. Through Kit, the novel explores the nature of trauma, survival, and revenge.

Kit starts out as Katarina, the teenage daughter of hardworking Ukrainian immigrants. Kit is one of the poor kids in the rich ski town of Whistler, so she is harassed by her wealthy schoolmates. When she meets her Olympic ski idol John at a disastrous party, Kit is ridiculed, drugged, and raped by him and the rest of the ski team. Afterward, she is unable to remember the events of the night, and everyone around her lies about what happened. Kit finds herself pregnant and her mother coerces her into having an abortion. Kit quits school and takes a job as a maid in the nearby big city of Vancouver. As she gets older, she loses weight and dyes her hair blond, conforming to society’s standards of beauty. She enjoys participating in an amateur theatrical troupe with her friends and is a talented actor.

As a maid, generally overlooked, Kit has a compulsion to riffle through the belongings of her wealthy clientele.