Everything should stay as it is, or you will lose everything, and that's how it is for everyone.Today was a day for getting along, liver-healing, a cocktail party and a faster wireless connection that tolerates renovated turn-of-the-century walls and allows Candy Cane (or Coconut?) to become a part of your afternoon en suite bathroom caucus. Life is not good, but it feels good, on occasion, baby, is what you might type.-- from The Bourgeois Empire Paranoia, pills, and torrent after torrent of glorious porn. A marriage devoid of both sex and emotion. A broken hand, a perpetually surreal home reno, a dying dog.For Jules, a successful professional with a wife and kids, all of this would be manageable -- if it wasn't for Charlie. Because fifteen-year-old girls, dear reader, are something different entirely.Jules is obsessed with a teenager -- he's falling head over heels and attempting to arrest the march of time. He's a man, dammit -- a man's man, a guy's guy -- and that's all that matters.The Bourgeois Empire, Evie Christie's first novel, is a Nabokovian fever dream, an encyclopedic guide to mortal sin, and a thoroughly contemporary reimagining of Billy Wilder's classic film The Lost Weekend. And yes, of course, it's a love story too.