Customer Reviews

The Burning: A Novel

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The character development and writing in this novel is outstanding. Dallas and Deck are unlikable individuals with limited, selfish personalities. As portrayed, they are also very understandable and they too suffer, hence they are almost sympathetic. Logan and Keris, are very likeable, complex people.

I thought the interplay between Logan and Dallas as he plays blackjack in the first chapter was remarkable, almost a tour de force. As an example of the type of writing Legendre is capable of, I offer this: " Sometimes it happened like this. Sometimes she accidentally bit into the kernel of an emotion with some trivial comment and she needed an extra minute to absorb its flavor". Later Keris, in explaining her one night stand with someone like Deck talks of biting into a piece of chocolate, only to find goo inside.

Aspects of the plot bothered me. The fact is that economics as a science, like all science, is value neutral (its practitioners are something else). I would recommend the "Underground Economist" as an exceptional book, which among other things shows how economic principles can be applied to fight global warming and pollution efficiently - no new paradigm is needed. I also found the win streak that benefits Dallas at the end, and the subsequent scene in which she gets half the money (including half the man's original stake), contrived.

Legendre is particularly acute in his description of urban life in the modern desert southwest. Las Vegas has been characterized many times but seldom better; Legendre strips Vegas down to its bleak essence, a Disneyland of nihilism and insincerity. Of course if you actually like Las Vegas you might not agree with Legendre, but then if you like Vegas this may not be the book for you on several different levels.

His description of life in the Valley of the Sun, as metropolitan Phoenix is called by the Chamber of Commerce in something of an understatement, particularly in summertime, is brilliantly accurate. The glare, the heat, the trackless urban sprawl, the shimmering asphalt subtly influence the characters and the action of the novel until the reader feels a sudden need for sunglasses and air conditioning without really knowing why.

Anyone who has lived in or passed through these two desert cities will appreciate Legendre's clear-eyed vision and spare prose.

His friends Deck and Prentis persuade economist Logan Smith to join them for some fun in Las Vegas. Needing to escape the world of academia having just completed his graduate degree, Logan agrees. At a casino, Logan meets blackjack dealer Dallas Cole. He falls for her while she needs male attention and protection.

Logan becomes an economics professor at Arizona State University while his new wife Dallas feels out of place in the Tempe area especially in the academia setting. Meanwhile as their relationship turns shaky, Logan works on a neo-Marxist economic theory, which begins to look promising and could shake up the world order. However, he has problems; at home his spouse's clinging needs are driving him crazy; at the university his proposals including an advanced course are being rejected without a second thought; and finally there is this supportive female peer who turns on his body, mind and soul.

This is a terrific character study that star protagonists, especially Logan, who seem as human as they wish and yearn for something they do not have; the grass even in the desert is greener on the other side. Interestingly the macro economic theories are obviously complex yet easy to understand as Thomas Legendre does not dumb down but instead brings up his audience. Fans of a powerful intelligent drama will enjoy THE BURNING for something more in life.

Harriet Klausner

The Burning is chock full of romance, most of it lurking underneath the surface, as it does in the thought lives of most of its readers. At the same time, the book is brimful of intellectual stimulation, via the conversations and thought processes of its characters, most of whom live in the heady atmosphere of collegiate, professorial life. The combination is like a high tech bomb, stuffed with explosive material requiring a complex set of interpersonal computations to set it off.

What impressed me most about the book was not its enriching side discussions of econometrics or astrophysics, which quite honestly engaged me with excitement for hours, but instead the interspersion of these intellectual pursuits with the raw and commonplace drama of life, love, sex, and the ageless quest of lonely souls for wholeness. I found it overwhelmingly refreshing to read a novel where 49 out of 50 lines are not rapid, back-and-forth conversation, but instead where long paragraphs of mental activity take place, luring me in with their dead-on likeness to my own thought life, and painting real-life colors onto the canvas of my mind's eye. Legendre's descriptions teem with vivid hues, stereophonic sounds, and the occasional pungent philosophy dropped into the text with soulish brevity.

I should like to think that I have half the ability to write that Legendre has, and I hope that he follows up this enthralling novel with another, and another. I have devoured other authors' offerings with more rapidity, like fast food, but few with as much enjoyment and appreciation, like a fine filet mignon.

Reviewed by Cathy Yanda for Reader Views (7/06)

In Thomas Legendre's first novel, The Burning, is satisfying yet predictable. Logan, a newly graduated economist joins two semi-friends for a long weekend in Las Vegas. Trying to avoid his friends and get out of going to a strip joint, he plays blackjack and immediately falls for the dealer, Dallas Cole and ends up going home with her..."You're not really going to sleep on the couch. You know that, right?"...He felt a smile rise to his face. "Fair warning," she said. "I'm trouble." He shrugged. "Who isn't?" If he only knew the extent to which she would become trouble, he might have crashed on the floor of the hotel room with his friends.

Months later after their first meeting, two lonely people, Dallas and Logan are married and move to Arizona where Logan has a job as a professor at Arizona State. While Logan's career is floundering, the school taking a different approach to economics than he would prefer, Dallas, resents every moment her husband is working, and decides to make slot machines and video poker her best friends and runs up a large amounts of debt gambling and buying a new car that they cannot afford.

In walks Keris, the beautiful and accomplished colleague, Logan begins to have doubts about his marriage..."Here she was, sheathed in sweat, wearing a spandex bodysuit with her hair coiled and clipped at the back of her head. This was yoga class. It was Tuesday afternoon and Keris was supposed to be holding office hours right now but a teacher should be allowed to play hooky ever once in a while, correct?...Even the most rigid schedule should be able to accommodate some quantum movement here and there."

In the end, there are affairs, lessons in economics, un-wed pregnancy, gambling, sex, careers that get in the way of life and more. Legendre spins a good first novel that will be enjoyed by many looking for something less run of the mill.

Book received free of charge.