We have come to rely on Shane Joseph to populate his novels with characters who arrest our interest by how they cope with intimately personal affairs bound up inside emergencies and trials that threaten the very foundations of their – and our -- way of life. In this, his most recent novel, Empire in the Sand, he comes up trumps once again.
Once a senior executive with a pharmaceuticals company, Avery Mann’s career ends abruptly when he finds himself unable to support his new boss in a strategy that demands his company abandon a trusted medication for a cheaper generic version and thereby place profit before integrity.
While he didn’t lose financially, Avery’s dismissal robbed him of much that had been central to his life. And then worse things happen. His retirement investments fail. His wife becomes ill, is prescribed the generic drug he frowned on, and dies. His grandson harms himself in order to seek attention from feuding parents. His best friend suffers a debilitating stroke after learning that his political efforts have been crushed by robocalls that misdirected his supporters to a false polling station. He is lured into an affair with a younger woman who can only bring him misery. He learns that his son, while also filing for divorce, is leading the process by which the shares in the private corporation created to launch the dubious generic drug will be sprung on an unwitting public.
Avery is drawn into the maelstrom in which his private and personal life becomes inextricably tied up with events that directly threaten the stability of Canada’s broader political and moral order through corruption, greed and murder.
Shane Joseph does not shy away from themes that concern us in the myriad roles we play as members of families, friends and lovers, and citizens in a changing country and uncertain world. He shows us that we have no option but to face the recurring challenge of getting through life without causing too much injury to others and without sustaining too many injuries ourselves.
Bombarded by seemingly insurmountable problems, Avery asks Sarah whose path he has fortunately crossed, a key question: “Can one ever go back?”
Sarah’s response suggests that, of all the characters we meet in Empire in the Sand, it is she who is the moral protagonist of this engaging, provocative, and intriguing novel.
Like “Milltown”, Empire in the Sand has the makings of a riveting film or miniseries. Much will be made, and rightly so, of the symbolic liberation of honeybees from a row of hives by a pharmaceutical scientist with a social conscience, finely drawn by Shane Joseph. I hazard a guess that never have bees been used to such dramatic effect in literature since Bernard Mandeville wrote his satire, The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest almost three centuries ago.
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Top review from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2022
Once a senior executive with a pharmaceuticals company, Avery Mann’s career ends abruptly when he finds himself unable to support his new boss in a strategy that demands his company abandon a trusted medication for a cheaper generic version and thereby place profit before integrity.
While he didn’t lose financially, Avery’s dismissal robbed him of much that had been central to his life. And then worse things happen. His retirement investments fail. His wife becomes ill, is prescribed the generic drug he frowned on, and dies. His grandson harms himself in order to seek attention from feuding parents. His best friend suffers a debilitating stroke after learning that his political efforts have been crushed by robocalls that misdirected his supporters to a false polling station. He is lured into an affair with a younger woman who can only bring him misery. He learns that his son, while also filing for divorce, is leading the process by which the shares in the private corporation created to launch the dubious generic drug will be sprung on an unwitting public.
Avery is drawn into the maelstrom in which his private and personal life becomes inextricably tied up with events that directly threaten the stability of Canada’s broader political and moral order through corruption, greed and murder.
Shane Joseph does not shy away from themes that concern us in the myriad roles we play as members of families, friends and lovers, and citizens in a changing country and uncertain world. He shows us that we have no option but to face the recurring challenge of getting through life without causing too much injury to others and without sustaining too many injuries ourselves.
Bombarded by seemingly insurmountable problems, Avery asks Sarah whose path he has fortunately crossed, a key question: “Can one ever go back?”
Sarah’s response suggests that, of all the characters we meet in Empire in the Sand, it is she who is the moral protagonist of this engaging, provocative, and intriguing novel.
Like “Milltown”, Empire in the Sand has the makings of a riveting film or miniseries. Much will be made, and rightly so, of the symbolic liberation of honeybees from a row of hives by a pharmaceutical scientist with a social conscience, finely drawn by Shane Joseph. I hazard a guess that never have bees been used to such dramatic effect in literature since Bernard Mandeville wrote his satire, The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest almost three centuries ago.
Empire in the Sand has the makings of a riveting film or miniseries.
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2022
We have come to rely on Shane Joseph to populate his novels with characters who arrest our interest by how they cope with intimately personal affairs bound up inside emergencies and trials that threaten the very foundations of their – and our -- way of life. In this, his most recent novel, Empire in the Sand, he comes up trumps once again.Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2022
Once a senior executive with a pharmaceuticals company, Avery Mann’s career ends abruptly when he finds himself unable to support his new boss in a strategy that demands his company abandon a trusted medication for a cheaper generic version and thereby place profit before integrity.
While he didn’t lose financially, Avery’s dismissal robbed him of much that had been central to his life. And then worse things happen. His retirement investments fail. His wife becomes ill, is prescribed the generic drug he frowned on, and dies. His grandson harms himself in order to seek attention from feuding parents. His best friend suffers a debilitating stroke after learning that his political efforts have been crushed by robocalls that misdirected his supporters to a false polling station. He is lured into an affair with a younger woman who can only bring him misery. He learns that his son, while also filing for divorce, is leading the process by which the shares in the private corporation created to launch the dubious generic drug will be sprung on an unwitting public.
Avery is drawn into the maelstrom in which his private and personal life becomes inextricably tied up with events that directly threaten the stability of Canada’s broader political and moral order through corruption, greed and murder.
Shane Joseph does not shy away from themes that concern us in the myriad roles we play as members of families, friends and lovers, and citizens in a changing country and uncertain world. He shows us that we have no option but to face the recurring challenge of getting through life without causing too much injury to others and without sustaining too many injuries ourselves.
Bombarded by seemingly insurmountable problems, Avery asks Sarah whose path he has fortunately crossed, a key question: “Can one ever go back?”
Sarah’s response suggests that, of all the characters we meet in Empire in the Sand, it is she who is the moral protagonist of this engaging, provocative, and intriguing novel.
Like “Milltown”, Empire in the Sand has the makings of a riveting film or miniseries. Much will be made, and rightly so, of the symbolic liberation of honeybees from a row of hives by a pharmaceutical scientist with a social conscience, finely drawn by Shane Joseph. I hazard a guess that never have bees been used to such dramatic effect in literature since Bernard Mandeville wrote his satire, The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest almost three centuries ago.
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Top reviews from other countries
Janice J. Richardson
Corporate greed meets it's match
Reviewed in Canada on September 5, 2023
