The Garden of Last Days: A Novel | 
|  | | | Title: | The Garden of Last Days: A Novel | | Author: | Andre Dubus III | | Publisher: | W. W. Norton | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 02 June, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0393041654 / 9780393041651 | | List Price: | $24.95 | | You Save: | $8.48 | | Amazon Price: | $16.47 | |
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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:
• Loved It. 27 December, 2008
Andre Dubus's perspective on the characters inside the 9/11 plot is phenomenal. I loved this book. You are rooting for the characters, and begging them "don't do it!" all at the same time. Very well written, and keeps you engaged with every page.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1TZSX2RGQ7WU7
• Prune The Garden To Improve The Story 07 December, 2008
The story of a mishmash of people coming together is interesting; but, like other reviewers have commented, it would have been improved by deleting chunks of repetitive prose. That said, by building on a cast of spiritually broken characters, whose only link to innocence is a three-year- old, the writer depicts how each heads toward disaster. Their own personal disasters and one shared by us all. While it was hard for this reader to recognize or relate to the people in the story, Dubose puts a realistically human face on each of them. This alone gives strength to the story-telling because from the beginning one of these very flawed people is preparing to commit a horrendous act. Dubose doesn't use much dialogue. Instead histories and planned actions are revealed through individual, alternately placed narratives. Several of these narratives were far too long, seeming to describe every tree that a driver passed. A strip club, in all its sleaziness is the primary setting of the action. Here where both customers and dancers are predators and prey, the story brings together this flotsam of humanity. The club also serves as a metaphorical counterpoint to the widowed babysitter's garden where the child is safe and her mother's alternate persona finds refuse. The plot centers on April, the mother, whose error in judgment has terrible consequences that involve AJ, a frequent customer, who gets thrown out of the club. But, the story really belongs to Bassam, who is consumed by the demons of fanatical religiosity and arrives with lots of money to throw around. AJ has some issues, but there's little doubt as to how he'll solve the problem caused by one of his poorly thought out choices. The suspenseful element is whether or not the consequences of April's and AJ's actions will cause Bassam to change course.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2VJSNUHS8LJFG
• Can't Understand This Book Being On Top Of 2008 Lists 01 January, 2009
Why is this book on so many national and regional Best of 2008 lists? It professes to be a preface of our 9/11 world, with one of the hijackers being a character visiting the strip club that is the center of the novel, but to me the story just didn't really deliver on it's promises. Better editing could have reined this book in a bit as I felt as if there were constant repetition of action and thought processes. There were many times I just wanted to scream, "Get on with it." And then once it did it just fell flat. It's an all right book but I can not recommend it to you.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1X5SMZO6ZEEHY
• The Need For Patience And Reading Between The Lines ... 01 January, 2009
Undeserving, I think, of much of the harsh criticism I've been reading up to this point.
The character development and three-dimensionality of the book's major characters is key to the story. April, AJ and Bassam are all seriously flawed and have questionable motives and goals. Are they good people or bad? Have they made good choices or questionable ones? Are they lying to themselves about their true motives? Are they hypocrites? I think the real point here is the ability to see life in shades of gray rather than in black and white. I think the slow development of the characters in this book is key to its success.
I gave this book four stars rather than five because I don't think it's as good a book as House of Sand and Fog ... but as far as forcing the reader to think about the purity of motives, it's pretty darned good. And I couldn't put it down.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2LJOJFJATFZ7Z
• The Garden Of Last Days: Why Myth? 22 November, 2008
It has bee said there are no new stories; we repeat the same stories; and they come from mythical narrations passed from generation to generation. Andre Dubus repeats the familiar Garden of Eden myth in his novel Garden of Last Days. When he links complex contemporary characters to the myth we know he intends to ponder universal questions. What is the nature of man; does he have free will; and what is his purpose?
Eden is an enclosed garden with two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of immortality, the landscape of the soul. Configuring the novel with myth puts Dubus in company with Joseph Campbell who uses myth to find spiritual meaning in a postmodern world, which is exactly what Dubus attempts.
He sets his novel in the tropical landscape of Florida. He contrasts elements of the tree of knowledge of good and evil by describing Jean's lovely garden and the sleazy Puma Club. Behind Jean's enclosed garden is innocent goodness, full of light--the perfect setting for April's three year old daughter Franny. The Puma Club, a strip joint, is another enclosed garden, but it is dark, a setting for degradation where women commodify themselves selling sexuality, and lonely men numb themselves with drugs and booze in a misguided effort to make a human connection.
Although April spends her nights entertaining in this garden of lost innocence, she lives in both gardens and is the tie to all the characters in the story. Once Dubus introduces the characters he constructs a plot that moves the narrative to a fatalistic conclusion. Do the characters have free will or are their lives predictable? The reader knows early in the story where the plot is going. Does Dubus think the players have any choice about their fate?
He cares deeply about all of them. He details them in small increments. First he portrays stereotypes: April, single mother, exotic dancer; Jean, elderly lonely widow; AJ, divorced father and alcoholic; and Bassam, Muslim fundamentalist terrorist. Each time Dubus returns to detail a character he gives more facets--flashbacks revealing childhood, motivations, and human vulnerabilities. One of Dubus' interests is how the role of mother affects each character. He spells out April's interactions with her mother, AJ's, Bassam's; and the influence these mothers had on their children. Dubus presents April as mother to Franny; he presents Jean, childless, but also a mother the Franny. AJ, though male, is a nurturing mother-figure, better than his wife Deena, to his own son and to Franny. Dubus struggles with these imperfect mothers, who come up short cherishing their own children, imprinting them with weakness.
A sensitive observer, a genius at detail, Dubus does not accept a one dimensional stereotype. His characters contradict themselves: evil ones are sometimes kind; kind ones show a dark side. Just when the reader is ready to condemn a character Dubus slips in a vulnerable fact and the reader starts to care. Bassam, a terrorist with a warped perspective, becomes human when Dubus inserts an incident from childhood that lets the reader know how insecure Bassam is, how conflicted he was in relationship to his father. Despicable AJ drives drunk with Franny in his truck, but when the reader sees his sincere concern for the child, AJ is no longer simply an old drunk. The reader has empathy for the characters because Dubus cares about each of them.
What's to become of these fictional characters? What do they tell us about Dubus' view of the world in the garden of last days? Last Days? What becomes of the characters after they die?
Joseph Campbell says myth is shaped by recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology. He says the second impulse is that the social group that nourishes man existed before him and will survive him. And finally Campbell says that man, aware of his landscape, relates himself to the universe, not as the center of the universe but as a part. Is this the way Dubus sees the world? We all live in the garden of last days. We are all interrelated. We have choices and we impact each other.
What is Dubus' answer to the universal questions: what is the nature of man; does he have free will; and what is his purpose? Dubus seems to believe in fate, but he also believes in social interaction. He clearly sees evil and innocence as part of the human condition. Does he believe we really have free will? His novel asks questions but leaves many questions unanswered. Myth may be the only way to get to the essence of the human condition.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2STTJ8HVEU74F
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