February 2022's Burgoine Reviews & Pearl Rule Reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more that often simply isn't there. Although as you'll see, I'm not strict about the only-three-sentences rule.

Think about using it yourselves!

JANUARY 2022's BURGOINES live here.

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Mother Nile by Warren Adler

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The War of the Roses—a sweeping and ambitious novel spanning across two eras and the city at the center of it all.

Mother Nile is the story of Si, the American-born son of an Irish father and Egyptian mother, who goes on a journey through the winding streets of the City of the Dead to solve a half-century-old mystery. When his mother makes an urgent plea on her deathbed, Si knows that he must make the journey to Egypt to find out the truth about his long-lost half-sister, conceived during his mother's affair with King Farouk. Hunted by those who would do anything to keep the past in the past, Si finds help from a young woman who captures his heart. He leaves the City of the Dead a changed man. This work of historical fiction takes readers on an adventure brimming with suspense, intrigue, and romance.

Warning: This book is meant for readers who are 18+ due to mature content.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I strongly caution you to heed the "mature content" warning above. Themes in this book regarding women's bodily autonomy are not handled with 21st-century cultural norms in mind. Given how bad things still are, transpose them back seventy-plus years, put them in a milieu where a woman was literal chattel, and you should get with the program.

The prose is lush, the topic of Egypt's beauty is evoked in all of one's senses, and there will never be a day when a quest narrative...Isis? Osiris? the bells ringing yet?...doesn't have its own, usually compelling, appeal. There is nothing in here to cause readers of the Fifty Shades narratives to blanch, nor are the gender politics noticeably more offensive than Twilight contains. It is an historical novel, it deals with sexual mores that have changed, and the author is nearing one hundred years old...the topic of Othering would be a tough one to explain, and based on this book, if that's a concern for you this is not your best book choice.

Forewarned? Very well. For the Wilbur Smith reader who wants something extra, here's you a book.

Now available in print or Kindle edition here. (Non-affiliate Amazon link)

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An Editor's Burial: Journals and Journalism from the New Yorker and Other Magazines by David Brendel (Editor)

Adapted (loosely!) into Wes Anderson's Academy-snubbed The French Dispatch Of The Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (which avclub.com & I thought was the bee's knees anyway)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A glimpse of post-war France through the eyes and words of 14 (mostly) expatriate journalists including Mavis Gallant, James Baldwin, A.J. Liebling, S.N. Behrman, Luc Sante, Joseph Mitchell, and Lillian Ross; plus, portraits of their editors William Shawn and New Yorker founder Harold Ross. Together: they invented modern magazine journalism. Includes an introductory interview by Susan Morrison with {filmmaker Wes} Anderson about transforming fact into a fiction and the creation of his homage to these exceptional reporters.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I wanted to wait until I saw the Academy's treatment of the film before I opened my yap. I thought the film, which is more an "inspired by" than an "adapted from" this anthology of very good essays, was a solid four-of-five, just like the anthology was; for the same reasons, even.

Collecting essays written by wildly different people at very different inflection points in History leads, if one mistakenly attempts to read the result as an aesthetic whole, to a sense of being lost. I made that mistake. The essays are, as expected, superb. The issue was "what's Mavis Gallant doing in the same place as Luc Sante?!" It's like walking in on your grandma getting head from your high-school cheer captain.

In the main, then, it's expectations that will float or sink your enjoyment-boat. If you approach this as a very, very thick issue of The New Yorker and pace yourself, the reads are separately marvelous. If one looks at the performances, the costumes, the aesthetic of Anderson's film in discrete parts, they are each excellent. But in neither case do they make a whole.

Now available in print or Kindle editions here. (Non-affiliate Amazon link)

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Trans-Siberian Express by Warren Adler

Rating: 3-ish stars of five

The Publisher Says: American cancer specialist, Dr. Alex Cousins is on a covert mission to the USSR. He is tasked with prolonging the life of Soviet Politburo Chief, Viktor Moiseyevich Dimitrov, who is suffering from advanced stage leukemia. But the tenuous confidence between the unlikely colleagues is shattered one night as Alex accidentally discovers Dimitrov’s diabolical plans for a nuclear strike on China. Alex soon finds himself dispatched, homeward bound, on a six thousand mile journey aboard the Trans-Siberian Express; long enough, Alex realizes, to silence him from alerting the U.S. of the imminent destruction.

Reluctant, at first, to embark upon the journey, Alex is beckoned into the Siberian expanse by memories of his grandfather, Aleksandr Kuznetzov, who wove tales of magic and mystery into this seemingly desolate place. As the train lumbers east across snow-cloaked mountains, glimmering past a forest glow, watchful eyes rest on the American doctor. Surrounding him are people beaten and broken by life, each drawn to this emperor of trains in search of a brighter future. But most curious is Anna Petrovna Valentinova, the hauntingly beautiful history professor and Alex’s alluring travelling companion. As Anna captivates Alex with illusions of her homeland, a passionate romance transcending political barriers unfolds under KGB surveillance.

A train attendant yearns for love, a deformed man seeks revenge on an old enemy, and a persecuted Jewish couple runs to a new home as the Trans-Siberian Express roars onward through a cavern of hopes and memories, coloring its tracks with tales of love, loss and nuclear intrigue from one end of Russia to the other.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cold-War thriller made in the mold Jeffrey Archer or Ken Follett. You know what you're getting plot-wise from the synopsis. What you might not expect, le Carré fans, is the lyricism of the detail lavished on the countryside the train passes through.

What does not get lyrically panegyrized is the the "character" (term of art only) of Dr. Alex Cousins, the US oncologist sent quietly to save an important voice of reason in the Politburo. He is a camera, à la Isherwood ("I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking"), and still Anna Valentinova (his Soviet handler) has this wildly sexual relationship with him as they chug across the immensity of the Soviet Union on the titular train. Frankly I wondered why she bothered.

But it was the 1970s, she was probably told to by her Intelligence-service bosses, and according to the text Cousins was a stud in bed. (Told you it was the 1970s. First pubbed in 1977.) Which at least explains why she did it again, though she did monopolize the conversation from then on, thank the goddesses.

There was a lot of description that, while it was happening, gave me the wistfuls. The reason you're not seeing it here is...I don't remember where it was. This was a DRC and the damned thing lost my highlights when I opened the file on a different device! Gone from BOTH devices.

Anyway, it's a period piece, if you like Cold-War thrillers that move at train speeds instead of cruise missile velocities, this one will suit you. I regret nothing about having made the read.

The issue is I remember the same: Nothing. Available from Amazon on your Kindle for $4.99 at this non-affiliate link.

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Anonymous Sex by Hillary Jordan & Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A bold and playful collection of erotic stories written by some of the world’s finest writers. The twist? Each story is “anonymous,” allowing for tales as subtle or explicit, strange or familiar, tender or fierce as each writer wishes—leaving readers to guess who wrote what.

Welcome to the ultimate literary parlor game—a collection of unattributed erotic stories written by a stellar list of authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Awards, PEN Awards, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Edgar Awards, and more. Anthology editors Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan present an elegant, international collection of erotica, that explores the diverse spectrum of desire. There are stories of sexual obsession and sexual love, of domination and submission. There’s revenge sex, unrequited sex, funny sex, tortured sex, fairy tale sex, and even sex in the afterlife.

This seductive anthology is true to its name: while the authors are listed in alphabetical order at the beginning of the book, none of the stories are attributed, providing readers with a glimpse into the landscape of sexuality as explored by twenty-seven of today’s best-known authors.

NB I left off the list of contributors. It's long, I'm lazy. Sue me.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU (SORT OF).

My Review: Point one: I'm queer as the proverbial three-dollar bill. Point two: I'm old. Sex, while it still entertains and even once in a while delights me (given that the party of the second part is far away ATM that's not the most common occurrence), I'm not as, um, invested in the subject as I once was. Point three: I've internalized a lot more of the 21st century's norms and mores than I thought I had, as I discovered reading this.

A woman whose fantasy life is spent imagining her "ethnic" next-door neighbor, for example, made me a little...uneasy...because that just feels weird these #MeToo days. However, that self-same story contains some lines that made me snort my ramen:

...maybe I won't even ask them to talk about Things Fall Apart, which tends to startle and tongue-tie my almost-entirely-white-and-well-off wards. Not that I don't share their good fortune, though I, bookish girl from a big Irish Italian Catholic family, married into this seaside haven of college professors & financiers, skim-milk Unitarians who wouldn't know original sin from artisanal gin.

There is a startling absence of men as actors. Not just gay ones, men as the point of the story. That got it a half-point, though we can't remotely consider this a Bechdel-test win! Heterosexuality is common, goodness knows, but it's common as pig tracks here in this collection.

There are twenty-seven stories in this collection. I can actually remember reading three of them:
One Day in the Life of Josephine Bellanotte Munro does what I hope all women do: tosses itself off in any handy corner while seriously violating her Proper Matron Status by fetishizing the "ethnic" neighbor, wondering how the hell to convince her still-eager husband to go the fuck away with that thing, and scare her teenage daughter into a week's celibacy by threatening to expose her sex life to her dad.

Ick. Just...ick.

What the Hands Remember poignantly meditates on that one paralyzingly terrifying, utterly ensorcelling, always humiliating First: a boy's first sex with a living, breathing partner. In this case, as the man remembering it has lost all other memories, all other connections to life. This is the moment he relives.

Josephine will, somehow, somewhere, still feel you, will be back there with you...and that is the real Kiss of Death. A horndog you surely were, but in the end we are our final and authentic selves. SO: Vale, sir.

Vis-à-Vis 1953 suspends two bored, unhappy people in the gladsome cage of shared need and always sought, never satiated desire.

On a train from L. A. to Wichita, Kansas.

Ends, beginnings, they're the exciting bit. Middles can wear on you; there's no middle here.

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Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (tr. Moshe Gilula)

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: NATURE IS CALLING—but they shouldn't have answered.

Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick’s own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying. His face wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, Nick claims amnesia—but he remembers everything.

He remembers how he and Augustin were mysteriously drawn to the Maudit, a remote and scarcely documented peak in the Swiss Alps.

He remembers how the slopes of Maudit were eerily quiet, and how, when they entered its valley, they got the ominous sense that they were not alone.

He remembers: something was waiting for them...

But it isn’t just the memory of the accident that haunts Nick. Something has awakened inside of him, something that endangers the lives of everyone around him…

It’s one thing to lose your life. It’s another to lose your soul.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I can't quite believe this is a translation. Its prose rings like a crystal wineglass.

Every year, climbers—sometimes entire teams—disappear into deep glacial voids and die in their frozen darkness. If the mountain is merciful, the drop is deep enough to smash them into silence in one go. Most victims, however, are trapped between blue, narrowing walls of ice, and as their body warmth melts the ice, they sink slowly deeper and deeper, until they die very consciously of asphyxiation.

I can't quite believe I have a son named Sam (he's so much like me it's scary) who lives in a novel. By a Dutch guy. Whom I've never met.

There are November mornings when the cold is clear, crackling, and crisp, but this cold was sticky, syrupy, clung to you. Like it was begging you for help. You, the first organism to have crossed its path, and would you please take it with you and protect it from what's about to happen, because that was much, much worse than the cold itself.

Jesus. The Morose hadn't even got started yet and my metaphors were already going haywire.

I can't quite write a real review yet...still stunned, too scared to go back and figure out why...but it's a week ago the book came out and honestly I'm still shook that all y'all ain't got it on your nightstands yet.

You’ve often asked me why I climb mountains. You’ve also often asked me (I wouldn’t say begged, though it’s not far off the mark) to stop. Our worst argument was about this, and it was the only time I was really afraid that I would lose you. I’ve never been able to fully explain it to you. I wonder if it’s at all possible to fully explain to someone who isn’t a climber. There’s an apparently unbridgeable gap between the thought that I risk my life doing something as trifling as climbing a cold lump of rock and ice…and the notion of traveling through a floating landscape, progressing with utmost concentration while having absolute control of the essential balance that keeps me alive and that, therefore, lets me live. Conquering that gap is possibly the most difficult climb in the life of any alpinist who is in a relationship.

What is wrong with people?! Go get this terrifying, propulsive, exquisitely personal and depressingly universal horror-adjacent thriller. Go on! March, young scalawag. You can get any edition at Amazon (non-affiliate link).

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Lamb to the Slaughter by Joanna Chambers

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Unapologetic rake, Lucien St. Villiers, meets his match in young ingenue, Marcus Lamb

Lucien St. Villiers is a cynical rake with a taste for the young and innocent.

When he encounters the beautiful and inexperienced Marcus Lamb, he is determined to teach the young man every wicked pleasure in his repertoire. But will Lucien simply discard Marcus afterwards, or is he finally—shockingly—about to have the tables turned on him, once and for all?

My Review: Joanna Chambers: noun (improper) 1) wicked, wicked writer without a shred of decency or a scintilla of self-restraint.

2) being best be busying herself with certain other novel-length projects before returning to this one. "Lamb to the Slaughter" begins with a *shudder* w-bomb and ends long, long, long before it should.

In any case, a wicked temptress who decides to turn the tables on a rake and roué responsible for the debauchment of numerous young, virginal men (lucky boys!) and then shut off the story-spigot just as things are getting to the most interesting part...the morning after's fun, but the Wednesday after that is much, much more interesting...deserves public pillorying and contumely-heaping. You cannot buy this, this Torquemadan torture, but must sign up for her mailing list.


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Carmilla: The cult classic that inspired Dracula by Sheridan Le Fanu

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in the sexual tension between two young women and gothic romance.

A deluxe gift edition of the cult classic that predated and greatly influenced Dracula and much vampire literature that followed, including Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, teenaged Laura leads a solitary life with only her father, attendant and tutor for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest—the beautiful Carmilla.

So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her entrancing new companion, one defined by mysterious happenings and infused with an implicit but undeniable eroticism. As Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know the story already, even if you've never read it. You've seen a Dracula movie. Same stuff, different dresses. It's pretty, um, humid, and the device of anagramming "Carmilla" is lame as all hell, but frankly if you expect modern writing from someone working in the 1870s you're ill-advised to pick it up in the first place. It's an acquired taste. Let the language and the attitudes...considered old-fashioned when the tale came out...subsume your 21st-century-ness and take a mental vacation.

Lesbian Dracula story with built-in plausible deniability. LeFanu insisted his vampyre couldn't be lesbian because she was dead therefore by definition incapable of sexual activity. Great dodge, Sheridan! I can just see the tut-tutting moralists trying to figure out a response to this. Like people complaining about nudity in Maus, it's a smoke-screen for imposing *their* view of what's "nice" on others.

Don't like something? Move along! No one's making you focus on it. And your kids seeing it? Lock 'em up if you want to prevent the world from having its way with them. *SPOILER ALERT* It does not work. Stop trying, rely on your parenting to warp them into the shape you want. And leave normal people alone.

The deluxe (and is it ever!) hardcover for your Goth belovèd is available from the publisher.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.


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New Animal by Ella Baxter

PEARL RULED @ 53%

The Publisher Says: New Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.

Amelia Aurelia is approaching thirty and her closest relationships ― other than her mother ― are through her dating apps. She works at the family mortuary business as a cosmetic mortician with her eccentric step-father and older brother, whose throuple’s current preoccupation is with what type of snake to adopt. When Amelia’s affectionate mother passes away without warning, she is left without anchor. Fleeing the funeral, she seeks solace with her birth-father in Tasmania and stumbles into the local BDSM community, where her riotous attempts to belong are met with confusion, shock, and empathy.

Hilarious and heartfelt, New Animal reveals hard-won truths as Amelia struggles to find her place in the world without her mother, with the help of her two well-intentioned fathers and adventures at the kink club.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Absolutely not.

She's just told you her mother's funeral is today, Leo, and this is the first time you've met her. She's clearly fragile. Your job as a dom is to understand that consent in that frame of mind IS NOT CONSENT and you are now abusing a psychologically vulnerable person. The tremedous, exciting promise of the first half went out the window and I am so very out of here.

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The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) by A.J. Hackwith PEARL RULED at ~20%

The Publisher Says: In the second installment of this richly imagined fantasy adventure series, a new threat from within the Library could destroy those who depend upon it the most.

The Library of the Unwritten in Hell was saved from total devastation, but hundreds of potential books were destroyed. Former librarian Claire and Brevity the muse feel the loss of those stories, and are trying to adjust to their new roles within the Arcane Wing and Library, respectively. But when the remains of those books begin to leak a strange ink, Claire realizes that the Library has kept secrets from Hell—and from its own librarians.

Claire and Brevity are immediately at odds in their approach to the ink, and the potential power that it represents has not gone unnoticed. When a representative from the Muses Corps arrives at the Library to advise Brevity, the angel Rami and the erstwhile Hero hunt for answers in other realms. The true nature of the ink could fundamentally alter the afterlife for good or ill, but it entirely depends on who is left to hold the pen.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE YOUR LIBRARIES, FOLKS!

My Review: I think there should be some sort of penalty for a writer who can do this:

“They burn them first, the stories. Humans always come for the stories first. It’s their warm-up, before they start burning other humans. It’s their first form of control, to burn the libraries, to burn the books, to burn the archives of a culture. Humans are the stories they tell. If you want to destroy your enemy, destroy their stories. Even if the people survive, it will be as if they never existed at all.”

...not getting all the institutional support and community funding necessary to find a mentor to teach them to find a plot and work it into prose that pithy and aperçu-able.

I am beyond bitter that this societal failure has deprived me of what was all set to be a superlative read in a practically infinitely expandable I.P. I went through the quotes attributed to this title and wept in frustration that I simply could not invest in the actual story deeply enough to cause me to stay up past my bedtime devouring it.

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Hide Bound : Les's Bar #2 by Jodi Payne & B.A. Tortuga

The Publisher Says: Peter Marshall has had enough of working for Parks and Rec when he comes across an opening for a real carpentry job and decides to give it a go. Building things is his passion, so even though the shop seems a little out there, and the owner seems pretty grumpy, Peter decides to go for it.

Brandon McPhail wishes he didn’t have to hire a new carpenter, but his current one is going out on maternity leave. He’s especially wary of this kid who can’t possibly be old enough to spell BDSM, let alone know what the lifestyle means. But Peter impresses Brandon with both his talent and his tenacity, so Brandon hires him on, reminding himself that he’s in a wheelchair due to his MS, he had a terrible experience in his last relationship, and despite how clueless Peter is about the lifestyle, he’s not interested in taking on another sub.

The chemistry between them is undeniable, though, and it’s not long before they’re exploring what they can learn from each other. Peter is a natural at fulfilling Brandon’s needs, and Brandon thinks he’s teaching Peter everything he’s eager to learn, but when danger threatens, they have to help their friends through it while trying to navigate their new relationship. Can they forge bonds strong enough to bind them together for life?

Note to readers: Each book in this series is a true standalone, so don't be confused when you discover that Hide Bound takes place before Just Dex in the "timeline". That was deliberate, and you don't need to have read one to read the other.

My Review: Two w-bombs in five pages. I'm out.

Gag!