Book Description

Beneath a thin top layer of honey, the barrel is full of shit. At the bottom lies death.Mickey's life was an accident. Dumped by his mother hours after birth and losing his father from a heroin overdose at the age of three, he was adopted by his drug-addicted uncle and grew up in a company of crooks and loafers. Married to an older, deranged former coquette, he led a dull stoner's life up to his early thirties. Everything changed when he became rich overnight.Roaming the depraved streets of central Athens, high on cocaine, he runs into Frida - a charming, barely-adult street prostitute. After spending ten minutes together in a shabby hotel room, he falls madly in love and is prepared to do everything for her. But she is not ready to reciprocate his feelings in the least. She is not capable of showing the slightest fondness towards anything that is not the object of her sole profound craving - a fine brown powder going by the name of heroin. She is, though, very apt in making use of anything that can be the means to obtaining her next dose. A diffident, submissive, and infatuated nouveau riche does perfectly qualify for becoming her habit's ideal sponsor.So does Mickey quit his job, leave his wife and daughter, and move out with Frida to live a restless life of abuse and decay in the fetid streets around Omonoia Square of Athens. He is determined to pull her out of the swamp, save her, become her hero, and ultimately, be loved by her. A part of her thirsts after a normal life, but she has to confront the besetting might of heroin addiction and the sense of nihilism that it engenders. If he stands any chance to help her out of her predicament, he must first overcome his own weaknesses of character, vanity, and paranoid mind.For the time being, Frida is sunk a good way into the barrel, and striving to pull her out, Mickey runs the danger to be dragged in it himself...