Twelve Small Steps

Twelve Small Steps For Man
An International Bestseller

“A bravura performance … a delightfully uninformative look at the fall of a man and his attempts at recovery … astute and incomprehensible!” – Kirkus Reviews.

On his way to an A.A. meeting after bottoming-out for the umpteenth time that day, the anonymous narrator is hit by a drunk driver, the first in a series of hilarious, picaresque adventures to befall this Twenty-First-Century Don Quixote. Powerless over alcohol, with a life about as manageable as a bagful of cats, he happily discovers the twelve steps, but soon unhappily realizes he can’t count to twelve. Searching for a power greater than himself, starting with a couple of 3.6 volt batteries and working his way up, our hero flippantly undertakes a wide-ranging, magnanimous, searching, fearless and ultimately pointless inquiry into the philosophical and ethical questions that bear most strongly on the human condition and why so many prefer it dunked in alcohol. Ruminating on addiction, love, revenge, religion, and breakfast (the scene with the bacon is the funniest in literature since Jude the Obscure arrived in Christminster), each episode is characterized by brevity, wit, and a liveliness of mind that recalls the best of Montaigne, Swift, and Hermann Wilhelm Göring. The narrator’s own perspective on these subjects is broadened and deepened by liberal quotations from Sophocles and Shakespeare to Byron, Proust, and William Topaz McGonagall. Can our hero work his way up from nothing to a state of extreme non-existence? Will he be able to correctly identify his defects of character and be entirely ready for God to remove them, or will he, again, find himself downtown without pants and shoes? If you hate How-To books, you’ll love Twelve Small Steps For Man.

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“The most fun I’ve had with numbers since Snakes and Ladders.” Anon., author of Fun With Relapse.

“Brainwashing at its best.” Jack Trimpey, author of A.A. Sucks and Show Me The Money.

“What do you expect with half a staircase?” A. Sceptic, Atheism Today.

“I laughed, I cried … Can I use this stuff in a court of law?” The author’s wife.