The Burning - Hardcover

Legendre, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316731919 ISBN 13: 9780316731911

Publisher: Little Brown London UK, 2006

Synopsis

When an acquaintance suggests a wild weekend in Las Vegas, Logan Smith, struggling to establish an academic career in Philadelphia, thinks it might be just the kind of bright lights and reckless fun he needs. What he doesn't expect is a personal lesson in blackjack from a beautiful, dangerous, red-headed croupier called Dallas Cole who is going to change his life forever. Uneasily transplanted to a campus in the bleak desert state of Arizona, Logan immerses himself in his research, and tentatively he begins to explore a new and revolutionary theory. Gradually, as his work takes shape, not only does Logan's personal life shift and turn hostile around him but the ideas he is pursuing turn out to have repercussions more far-reaching than he could have imagined: and if he is right in his theorising the very future of the planet is at stake. He must deal with temptation, self-doubt, betrayal and implacable opposition before he can follow his discovery through, and by the time Logan's theories are put to the test all the assumptions he has ever made are brought into question. Generous in its scope, deeply absorbing and effortlessly brilliant, this is one of those rare novels which makes you see the world afresh.

About this title

From Booklist

Logan Smith has just finished his doctoral dissertation in economics and decides to unwind in Vegas. There he meets beautiful blackjack dealer Dallas, who gives the naive Logan a few instructive tips on the game and, later, further guidance in the bedroom. Less than two years later, the newlyweds settle in Arizona, where Logan has been hired to teach. He also devotes himself to refining his radical challenge to neoclassical economics. As he becomes absorbed by his work and his intellectually stimulating conversations with an alluring astrophysicist, the volatile, complicated Dallas develops a serious gambling problem. In this remarkably assured debut, Legendre weds a provocative novel of ideas to an affecting story of romantic trials and tribulations. It is a testament to his considerable narrative skill that he makes equally compelling reading out of scenes depicting the academic debate among dueling economists and scenes of a desperate Dallas gambling away the couple's life savings. Muscular prose and heady intellectual banter combine in this exceptionally fine debut. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers Weekly

Writing about gambling, chance and fate, Legendre takes a bold risk, wagering an enjoyable if predictable bloke-lit debut against the egghead novel of ideas that it becomes—and he pulls it off. Fresh out of graduate school, economist Logan Smith joins a couple of friends for a weekend in Las Vegas, where he falls for troubled, needy blackjack dealer Dallas Cole. A few months later, Logan is a professor at Arizona State University, and Dallas is his uneasy new wife. Moving from the trials of a marriage's first year to the rarified world of academia, Legendre makes Logan's life of the mind every bit as stimulating as the human drama that surrounds it, providing Logan's neo-Marxist theories with resonance and real stakes. Legendre's fully realized characters, longing for something other than what they have—other lovers, other careers, other political realities—render vividly the weight of American yearning. (July)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown London UK
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0316731919
• ISBN 13: 9780316731911
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 407