Everyone makes the claim that their family is weird. When Alan says this he really means it. He is the son of a mountain and a washing machine. Being the eldest, he has to care for his siblings, all brothers, one of whom is an island(literally)and three who are actually a set of nesting dolls who will starve to death unless placed one within the other within the other. They all live inside their father ,the mountain. Their mother is hooked up to an underground lake in their father's main cavern.
The last child their mother gives birth to is David, an emaciated creature who almost immediately begins to torment the denizens of the mountain, biting and clawing his brothers, mutilating animals and destroying what few possessions this unlikely family has. Alan bears the brunt of this onslaught. For some inexplicable reason David seems to despise him. He even follows Alan down the mountain and into town to school and throws rocks at him whenever he comes outside.
Alan has no friends because he knows he can never bring anyone home and also that no one would be able to comprehend his situation. He can't get his mind around it, himself. He has no idea how a family such as his is even possible. Many times he asks his father to tell him how and why this came to be. His father's answer, coming on the warm breezes that blow through the cavern, is invariably the same: there is no answer and if there is, then even he himself doesn't know it. Alan grows more frustrated and resigns himself to a long, lonely life. That is, until he meets Marci, a transfer student from Scotland.
She is everything Alan's classmates are not: wild and willful, with an indomitable spirit. She lives with her father, a mining engineer. Marci happens upon him one day out in the woods near the school and at first thinks that he's actually been stalking her. He manages to convince her that he poses no threat and from that point they are nearly inseparable, spending lunch and recess together, playing in the woods and hanging out at Marci's house.
Alan finds that he cares very deeply for Marci but he still faces the same problem; how can he ever hope to explain his bizarre family to her? She eventually becomes suspicious of the fact that they never go to his house. Alan is almost at the point where he can't placate her with excuses anymore. But soon he is saved the trouble of continuously dodging the subject. Marci follows him home from school one day and learns the truth. And she is not afraid. She cares so much about Alan that it doesn't matter to her. Alan knows right then and there that he truly loves her.
But their love is not meant to be. David, in a final act of viciousness, murders Marci. In the space of a day Alan sees his hopes of, at long last, having stability in his life, having someone on which to center himself and his attentions, crushed. This is the last straw for he and his brother. They band together and kill David and bury him on Alan's brother, the island. These horrible incidents finally breaks Alan's resolve. He can no longer stand to be a part of this family. He soon leaves the mountain for good and ventures out into the larger world.
Many years later, Alan is a man on the cusp of middle age, living in Toronto, Ontario, renovating an old house in the city's bohemian Kensington neighborhood and trying to lead a quiet and, for the most part, anonymous life. But David had risen from the dead to take revenge. One by one, Alan's brothers disappear, presumably killed by David. When Alan's last brother comes to warn him Alan realizes that David is working his way back to him, saving him for last. He is forced to confront his past once again after so long.
As with his previous works, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow takes a far-fetched idea and makes it work, with no explanation justification. He is adept at humanizing even the most outlandish individuals. Even with his strange family, one is still able to instantly relate to Alan and the trials he faces. He has tremendous inner strength and is caring and considerate, no matter what.
