On the border between the necropolis of Colma -- home to over two million dead souls and 1,794 somewhat live ones -- and the gritty, industrial working class town of South San Francisco…

… little, seven year old, adopted Reynaldo bristles at the increasing abuse hurled at him by a mother who now sees him as a burden and distraction from her real job -- raising the beautiful daughter she has finally conceived after two miscarriages. Her husband, Allen, a workaholic Silicon Valley engineer, spends more time worrying about his imagined position in the community and a possible promotion at work, than he does about his deteriorating family. He medicates his guilt with the sweet brews served up at McCoy's, the mysterious pub, and occasional Hell's Angels hangout.

… up the street, Rad and Tawny, two twenty-something, happily-jaded and pierced punks, distract themselves from the stresses and boredom of their conventional relationship, and the limitations and responsibilities of their blue collar places in modern America, with grunge rock, sex, skateboards, Buddhism and their fifteen foot long pet Burmese python.

In The Shape of a Man is a cross between Revolutionary Road and Rosemary's Baby -- a genre-bending novel of modern alienation and evil. Losers, innocents, a classic outcast, and some Hell's Angels… all circle the drain of failure, coming closer and closer till they crush up against one another in a National Enquirer-type ending that stays with the reader long after they put the book down.