Scabrous, vicious and unpleasant in life, Lily Bloom has not been noticeably mellowed by death. She has changed addresses, of course, and now inhabits a basement flat in Dulston — London's borough for those no longer troubled by breathing — but if anything her temperament has worsened. Finding it hard to deal with the (enforced) company of a calcified, pop-obsessed fetus, her dead, foul mouthed son and three gruesome creatures made of her own unwanted fat, she must find something to do with her time. So how do the dead live? And what happens when they stop being dead?