The Abomination - A sordid tale of sex ‘n beer ‘n cryptozoology

Norway, 1999. At 30-something, ex-yuppie Robert J. Roid Jr. is pretty sure he’s got life all figured out, and it’s not a pretty sight. Expatriated in Oslo, a rock ‘n’ roll pub owner with a serious nose for Austrian beer and a nasty case of hypochondria, he plows through women, drink and junk food like a lost weekend careening off the tracks. Living the carefree bachelor life together with two impossible roommates, one day melts groggily into the next as the rest of world waits for the new millennium to arrive.

But fate clearly has other plans for our reluctant hero; a chance encounter with an overzealous doctor and his sabotaged medical software is about to send Robert off on a wild goose-chase, desperately seeking a cure for his newly acquired disease, Homo nivis abominabilitis - the Abominable Snowman Syndrome (ASS). Hitting the road, he takes just about every wrong turn possible, but ultimately ends up taking a journey inwards, a place he has studiously avoided for years.

Deconstructed, chronically future-shocked, culturally alienated and slowly-but-surely sinking into a quagmire of soul-numbing ennui, Robert seems to have gained the world yet lost sight of himself and that which actually gives meaning to his life. Yet when all appears to be lost, hope and redemption are still to be found, often where we least expect them. Along the way true love unexpectedly comes knocking, he serendipitously stumbles over the Holy Grail of pilsner beer and, finally, uncovers the shocking truth about the Abominable Snowman and his own ASS.

Clocking in at approximately 120,000 words, The Abomination is a comic yet topical novel for and about our perplexing postmodern times. A road movie with plenty of hairpin turns and Escheresque roundabouts, it delivers its punches with a crooked smile and leaves a sudsy aftertaste.