Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. It is the metafictional account of a disaffected young man, Christie Malry, who applies the principles of double-entry bookkeeping to his own life, "crediting" himself against society in an increasingly violent manner for perceived "debits". Even if we understand all is chaos, the understanding itself represents a denial of chaos, and must therefore be an illusion.

As mentioned in other reviews, this is an experimental novel that combines wicked doses of dark humor with many different, and hilarious, nods to the fact that this is a novel. In spite of the relative success of the film I can't see me making a film with anyone in the British Film industry at the moment.This doesn’t work out so he then is hired as an accountant at a firm which makes chocolates and baked goods.

Born into a family without money, he realised early along in the game that the best way to come by money was to place himself next to it. The course of these events is highly redolent of Johnson’s own path between leaving school and going to university as a mature student. We fondly believe that there is going to be a reckoning, a day upon which all injustices are evened out.Detailing the life of a petty clerk who begins to tally his accounts with society -- debits incurred by an assortment of modern inconveniences, frustrations, and injustices against his credits, beginning with minor vandalisms and quickly escalating -- this reads like a kind of darker Calvino, seemingly light-handed amusing post-modernism eliding into something much more cynical. In a further rejection of realist fiction, the story itself is deliberately over the top, increasingly and hilariously surreal as Christie avenges the smallest slights with the most elaborate and excoriating plots that culminate, finally, in mass murder.