- Paperback: 112 pages
- Publisher: ECW Press (Oct 1 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1550229354
- ISBN-13: 978-1550229356
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 14 x 1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #446,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Quill & Quire
Jules, the protagonist of Toronto poet Evie Christie’s debut novel, is a successful lawyer with a wife and kids, but he’s also lonely, bored, and saddled with a porn addiction. To make matters worse, his marriage is on the rocks and he’s falling in love with a 15-year-old girl named Charlie. As Jules descends deeper into depression, he becomes more and more detached from his life and family.
Closer to American Beauty than Lolita, The Bourgeois Empire examines unsatisfied middle-class urbanites struggling with the shame and emptiness that are byproducts of their distorted values. This is a well-worn theme, which Christie attempts to rejuvenate by experimenting with narration and structure. The book is narrated in the second person and jumps back and forth in time. Unfortunately, these devices are insufficient to rise above the story’s essentially clichéd nature.
Christie’s use of the second person is at first jarring, but it does serve a purpose: as a result of this narrative intimacy, Jules comes off as even more dislikable. However, he remains for the most part one-dimensional, whining repeatedly about the state of his life. This is especially unfortunate given that he is the most fully realized character; everyone else is a type. Jules’s yuppie wife wears couture-yoga clothing. Jules barely acknowledges his almost non-existent children. Even Charlie, Jules’s obsession, is little more than an off-kilter pixie dream girl.
There are scenes that work nicely. A chapter detailing Jules’s shameful, secret porn stash is sympathetically rendered. And during an encounter between Jules, his wife, and the couple’s dying dog, Christie takes us, briefly, beneath the veneer of Jules’s superficial surface.
The best feature of the book is the writing. Christie’s prose is precise, propulsive, and often funny. In an early chapter Jules wonders what would happen if his house caught fire while he was hidden in his office gorging on Internet porn. Would he make it out in time or remain shackled to his computer? “Do you hope your robe abides, drape yourself over the screen? Hope a testicle doesn’t drop aside.…” Such sequences show that Christie is talented, but her talent needs a subject worthy of it.
Review
"Evie Christie’s debut novel is brutally brilliant . . . . Christie puts you in the shoes of this despicable man, but ties the laces with compassion." —Telegraph-Journal
"Christie’s prose is precise, propulsive, and often funny." —Quill & Quire
"Christie crafts short, feverish chapters of radiant prose . . . a carnivalesque romp through middle age, addressing the menace of mortality while lampooning comic stereotypes . . . Christie’s audacious writing pulses with life." —Globe and Mail
"Christie’s second book and first novel . . . pulses with that same sexual intensity she brought to Gutted, only magnified tenfold . . . The take is as brave and seductive as it is corrupt, and as pornographic as it is beautiful." —Broken Pencil
"The most striking thing about Evie Christie’s unconventional debut novel is its point of view—not because of its use of the second person, which is a formal device that Christie is willing to let slip on occasion, but for the withering cold eye it casts on masculine stereotypes. . . . That the book works so well is testament both to Christie’s wonderfully alert writing and the way she maintains a perfectly balanced moral tone throughout." —National Post
Inside This Book
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top 5 of last year., Feb 16 2011
By Tom Roberts - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Bourgeois Empire: A Novel (Paperback)
One of the best books I've read from 2010, definitely in my top 5. A very provocative and exciting work from a young Canadian author. Can't wait for her next.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boring, Jan 31 2011
By Vellin - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Bourgeois Empire: A Novel (Paperback)
Beautifully written prose with no substance. There's no climax to the story line. It'd be a great read for individual quotes but that's about it. I don't recommend this at all.
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