Edith Seagrass comes to New York to work as a summer intern on Ubu, a New Yorker-like magazine She is unaware that Lulu, the mother who had given her up for adoption 21 years earlier, has arranged for her to get an apartment in the same building where she lives. Lulu intends to reveal herself to Edith in due course, but in the meantime Edith is swept up in the sophisticated world of Ubu and the eccentric and memorable characters who produce it.