Claire Paxton is a rebellious and independent late teen, her outlook on life which is driven largely by the fact that her single mother is a self absorbed alcoholic. Claire is repeating some of her senior year classes at Toronto's Arthur Meighen High School in order to graduate, which she decides to do during the school year rather than waste her precious summer doing it in summer school. She has little motivation to attend classes or graduate. Her school year is affected largely by her encounters with two males with who she ends up spending much of her time. The first is Jim, the thirty-something front man for the funk band, the ElastoCitizens, with who she embarks on a sexual relationship. The second is Henry, a ninth grade student who she used to babysit. Henry is an exceptional student, but is at a stage in his life where he too is starting quietly to rebel against his straight-laced upbringing. Claire acts as his mentor in his coming of age, which may change if she knew that ...

A city is ravaged by an epidemic of instant "white blindness". Those first afflicted are quarantined by the authorities in an abandoned mental hospital where the newly created "society of the blind" quickly breaks down. Criminals and the physically powerful prey upon the weak, hoarding the meager food rations and committing horrific acts. There is however one eyewitness to the nightmare. A woman whose sight is unaffected by the plague follows her afflicted husband to quarantine. There, keeping her sight a secret, she guides seven strangers who have become, in essence, a family. She leads them out of quarantine and onto the ravaged streets of the city, which has seen all vestiges of civilization crumble.