On his eighteenth birthday, Brian Hartman takes a job at Adult World, a pornographic specialty store, and in the months before his high school graduation not only receives quite an extra-curricular education, but also discovers that not all of the people in his life are who he thought they were - including his own mother. Alternately moving and profane, Adult World takes the sweet coming of age story and gives it a dose of sour satire to explore the elements of modern sexual and emotional relationships in a way that makes it more in line with the sensibilities of today's readers young and old.