It's New York in the hot summer of 1999.
Why does a ghost from the last century - a stroppy suffragette called Agnes McPhail - show up uninvited at the Broadway apartment of fainthearted-feminist artist Albertine Andrews? Is it because Albertine hasn't had sex for 187 days and is starting to hallucinate? Or is her spectral great-great-grandmother really bearing wisdom for a stressed-out pre-Millennial world gone mad?
Albertine and her friends are deep in the thirtysomething dilemma: torn between getting on with their lives and getting the right man - or just the right sperm. There's eyepatch-wearing Leonardo, the unreliable yet irresistable filmaker who finds himself grappling not just with Albertine, but also with her dead ancestor.
The ethereal presence of Agnes, along with her trunk full of dusty letters, her strong opinions and the echos from her strange life, underlines the wholesale weirdness of the changes that lie ahead for Albertine. When her half-baked ambitions receive a sudden and thrilling boost, Albertine is left to wonder: Is Agnes somehow helping her out? Is she a sister spirit? Or is Albertine becoming completely unhinged? And what is under that eyepatch?