Harold Crick - IRS auditor, milquetoast, and poster child for obsessive-compulsive disorder - wakes one morning to hear a woman's voice in his bathroom, narrating his life as he is living it, subsequently announcing his imminent death. This is a big problem, since Harold has a burning crush on Ana, his latest audit case. Searching for the source of the voice, he turns to literary theory-spewing professor Jules Hilburt, who eventually discovers that talented but troubled novelist Karen Eiffel is writing Harold--he is the central character of her new novel, "Death and Taxes." The question is: will Harold's story end as a comedy, or a tragedy?