Jarleth Prendergast is an ex-pat Irishman, an aging punk rocker, a film snob, a copy-shop employee, a dime-store intellectual, and a truly desperate man. His marriage is in pieces and his career as an avant-garde claymation artist is heading nowhere. As the book opens, he receives a letter from Irish lawyer Sean Reynolds about an inheritance from his Aunt Lucy and promptly falls into fits of delusion as hilarious as they are utterly pathetic. Certain beyond reason that this "cash fuel injection" will turn his life around, Jarleth enters on a course of rampant self-destruction, narrating it all in his head to his new best friend: Sean, the Irish lawyer. As things begin to fall apart, and the money continues to be delayed, he grows increasingly obsessed with his past - the sad comedy his life has been - until a series of chance encounters sends him on a final, apocalyptic mission.