This is a striking debut in Irish prose at the turn of the century. Born in Dublin in 1964, Michael O'Dwyer attended school and pool halls until he graduated, then moved on to pubs, cinema, bookshops and college classes, where he earned two trophies: a first-class honors degree and a girlfriend. He worked as a freelance designer and photographer until he started jumping up and rushing to his desk at night; Thus was born a novel about a stuffed dog on wheels. At just over three years old, Alex Walker killed his parents. Without the slightest, however, malicious intent. And he would have thought a hundred times more if he had known in advance that his father’s ex-lover, photographer Johnnie Walker, nicknamed Whiskey, would adopt him. If Alex had known in advance that his stepfather would be a fashionable artist with skeletons in his closet and a drug-addicted butler, with silent twin daughters and a far from silent sadistic son, he would never have gone to the end of the world to visit the Sea Monster. Now Alex is drowning in boundless depression and asks his parents to come back. All he was left with was a chest full of old photographs and his faithful dog Jasper Walker, stuffed with sawdust...