And so he takes us back into the days of his childhood and we witness the thoughtless cosseting he received from his beautiful mother, and the chilly distance his father maintained between them. He describes the terrors he experienced being packed off to boarding school, where he became an object of scorn and abuse from other boys, and of the furtive sexual longings of two teachers; the dangerous mix of emotions that both situations engendered in him and the strategies he adopted to survive them; his acceptance to Oxford and subsequent break from his parents; and the "odd desire for transgression ... (and) incomprehensible need for corruption" he discovered in himself as a young man much older than his years. Throughout the book, Santiago slowly reveals to us the dark reality of his present life in London, where he is captive to the simultaneous compulsions to both attain and resist total emotional and physical capitulation to another.

"The Abomination" is dense with sensual and psychological detail, with the drama of extreme circumstance and the mundanity ofdeception. Written with sharp and unforgiving intelligence and candor, it starkly illuminates the complex, tortured workings of one man's heart and mind. It is a stunning fiction debut.