Love, Cruelty, Power: the three cornered stool on which the world squats. A Sting in the Ale is not a novel, it is not even an anti-novel but rather an extended meditation in short story and poetic form over the events reimagined of an otherwise uneventful life; the life of every human animal in which plot and plans fall prey to one darn thing after another. Most things were never meant to be - as the poet of lower middle class misery once observed. The modern cult of power has replaced the ancient notion of the Good as the credible measure of a fulfilled and meaningful life. To what pass is the cult of the self and the cult of power and its holyfool handmaidens leading us? Power, Cruelty and Love; the power of love, the love of power and the universal apologia of partners, jilting lovers, politicians and pimps of various persuasions insisting that one has to be cruel in order to be kind. Very often the kindness in the human animal is cruelty in waiting. A Sting in the Ale is a work of art or pornography - only the individual reader can decide.