TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL REVIEWS THE BOURGEOIS EMPIRE

Told as a second-person narrative, Evie Christie's debut novel is brutally brilliant. The protagonist is a man - "oldish, hot, tired and in the throes of an impressive existential failure" and hopelessly in love with a 15-year-old girl. Christie puts you in the shoes of this despicable man, but ties the laces with compassion. "This is you, your one life ... And this is it?" writes Christie, judging you more for wasting your time as a businessman than your pedophilia. This is a man whose bourgeois empire life hardly mattered. His deviant behaviour is framed as a sad, hopeless answer to what you want from life: "something different. Not really better, just something else."