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The Garden of Last Days: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Andre Dubus Iii
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $9.00
You Save: $15.95 (64%)
New (53) Used (42) Collectible (21) from $9.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  89 reviews
Sales Rank: 18004
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.6
ISBN: 0393041654
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780393041651
Publication Date: June 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: UNREAD HARDCOVER, LIGHT WEAR AND DUST (SJ) ISBN: 0393041654
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Product Description
From the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection House of Sand and Fog—a new big-hearted, painful, page-turning novel.
One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work. April's usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works.
Except that April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely.
From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate, page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth, and realism that characterized Andre Dubus's #1 bestseller, House of Sand and Fog—and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 84 more reviews...
 "A little luck like this felt like bait for bigger luck." June 2, 2008
76 out of 89 found this review helpful
While House of Sand and Fog addressed the heartbreaking dilemma of a proud Iranian immigrant faced with the intractable demands of a young woman and a bureaucratic blunder with tragic consequences pre-9/11, The Garden of Last Days tumbles into a much darker landscape on the eve of America's loss of innocence. The internal drama is played out on the tawdry runway of a Florida Gulf Coast strip club, the Puma Club for Men, where April is forced to break her own strict rule, taking her three-year-old daughter, Franny, to work rather than miss an opportunity to salt away more money toward a future free of the decadent circumstances in which she now makes her living. April is a bit of an anomaly, with a well-thought out plan for escaping the downward spiral of such employment, most of the other dancers fortifying themselves with drugs and the occasional extra date with customers after the club closes. But April is thrown off the usual rhythm of her bifurcated life, the dayworld/nightworld of April/Spring when her landlady goes to the hospital unexpectedly with an anxiety attack.
Deeply troubled by this merging of two worlds, April has every reason to doubt the wisdom of her decision as the shift grinds on. Tina, who agrees to keep an eye on Franny while April dances is at best lackadaisical about Franny's care in a cramped office just off the women's dressing room, Tina easily distracted by the demands of her boss. Tiny Franny, in her pink pajamas, is by turns enthralled by her Disney movies and snacks, but needing constant reassurance that her mother will soon take her home. The following hours are filled with a heart-stopping chain of events portending disaster, the incessant beat of the DJ's selections as each stripper takes to the stage, the drunken shouts of customers paying for a show, the exchange of money for services, all under the guise of a good time. April is watched: by Louis, her lascivious boss; by Lonnie, a bouncer who views "Spring" as different from the others; by Bassam, a chain-smoking, intense young man from Saudi Arabia who walks straight into the embrace of evil, unable to resist the seduction of this foreign country's blatant disregard for modesty. On the cusp of a great personal sacrifice, Bassam covets April's attention in the private Champagne Room, willing to pay handsomely for his moral digression.
Fleshed out by the disaffection of a loud-mouthed customer, AJ, who is thrown out of the club for unacceptable behavior, a terrible chain of events is set in motion, AJ desperate to reclaim wife and son, a victim of his own excesses and a fixation on a wide-eyed dancer whose only interest is in his wallet. As AJ's transgressions pile up in contrast to his best intentions, pinballing over the wreckage of his past actions, Bassam focuses on April/Spring, alternately judging and lecturing while April cannot keep her eyes from the hundreds of dollars that will bring her dream that much closer. As the hours pass, a diverse cast divulges their secrets, the individual histories that have led to this fateful night on the Gulf Coast, the shattered dreams, the misspent promise of youth, lives sidetracked by necessity and bad choices, at the heart of it the slightly ranting of a fanatical Bassam, seduced by the imperfections of the flesh while embracing the distortions of his extremist education.
April otherwise engaged, a little girl awakens, alone and afraid, crying for her mother; a drunk, angry man notices, blundering through his own vague yearnings. And once more, through the minutiae of random struggles, a greater tragedy evolves. Certainly Dubus is a master of the unexpected confluence of events begun through the collision of human frailty and false pride, an impending cultural cataclysm that erases America's innocence. Based on fact, this novel's exploration of the seedy underbelly of modern culture is both intense and broad, Dubus once more shaking a distracted psyche and reminding us to pay attention. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
This is Genius May 28, 2008
56 out of 73 found this review helpful
This year has been one for books in my opinion. James Frey's new novel--which I really didn't expect to be all that good--blows up on the page as this wide scoped brilliant collage of Los Angeles life. Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone (mild and tempered book of a young girl coming of age after suffering an assault and becoming obese) and the brilliant and genuine piece of commercial literature I Know This Much Is True has his new novel announced for November. And this novel, from the author that brought us Bluesman and House of Sand and Fog brings us a book that is as important in the caliber of literature as it is important to every American life. This powerful novel adresses such things as sex and social need and it pulls us into the world of September 11th 2001 and into the mind and heart of a terrorist.
The writing is both raw and exuberant. The language is both tense and rhapsodical. This is a novel that can entertain the non-reader and please the literary eye. It invokes itself into well described and well researched worlds and creates them in front of your eyes. You become April's anxiety as she takes her daughter to her place of work when her babysitter says she can't come. You are drawn into the sadness and distance of some of the patrons and the haughtyness and the rambunctiousness of some of the others. The old woman, Jean, is beautifully described as a woman whose heart may be so big that it might be killing her... she was the babysitter... or was supposed to be but she had to go to the hospital. There's the child described with so much innocence that you can see her come to life as her mother tries to rub the grape ring from a slush aroun her mouth with a moist wipe. You can see her arms and her petulant and tired nature, and that is merely the opening pages.
This book is destined to be considered great. I wouldn't doubt if it took the national book award this time. You need not any hesitancy in this purchase, no falling asleep here, it is asbolutely captivating. To go through it all in a small summary, you have a stripper who takes her kid to work, her job is just a job to her and she finds herself angry and despondent to the world, she works at the puma club. Jean is the old woman that rents an apartment to April--the stripper--and she has to go to the hospital with heart pain, AJ is a somber and respective man with a distinct and inate nature of talking to April while looking at her face instead of her eyes, and the terrorist like I said is heartfelt. Buy it. You'll love it. You're life will be enthralled as you start reading it.
Do not pay attention to the negative reviews and read this book! September 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed "House of Sand and Fog" and I enjoyed this book just as much. Dubus is an excellent writer with an ability to portray an array of vastly diverse characters while setting an amazing tempo.
His vivid descriptions within one terrifying night made me feel like I was there with these people watching this crazy night unfold. I was totally enthralled by this book and find it hard to believe all the negative reveiws. I could not put it down. Luckily I did not read them beforehand because I might not have purchased this book. And what a pity that would have been!
Astounding and Emotional June 11, 2008
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is a gritty and graphic novel of the last days of one of the 9/11 highjackers and his chance meeting with April, an exotic dancer. Although the club scenes are filled with salacious details of the strip club life, the protagonist April retains her sense of self and has the reader hoping she will find her way. Part of this sympathy is developed through April's toddler daughter, Franny, based on Franny's innocence and state of jeopardy throughout the novel. Other important characters, from Jean the old woman who helps April with babysitting, to AJ, a wife-beating man with a temper problem and a soft heart for little kids, and his wife Deena, with her broken dreams, make up just a part of the rich tapestry of this novel.
It is long; it is difficult; it is beautifully written.
Stephen King called my attention to this novel with his review in ET, and I certainly agree. This book is not to be missed. Amazing! By the author of "The House of Sand and Fog"--longer, more suspenseful, and equally heartbreaking.
Fantastic Read! August 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Like so much of Dubus' writing, the pull between the choices characters make and the circumstances they let happen to them dance to a volatile tune of fightening possiblities. The book reads quickly depsite it's size and the pace of events pulls you through the story -- I had trouble putting it down! The details of events and range of characters makes for a rich and compelling story. I highly recommend this book!!!
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