The Garden of Last Days

by Andre Dubus III

Overview

“So good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

In his stunning follow-up to the #1 best-selling House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus draws us into the lives of three deeply flawed, driven people whose paths intersect on a September night in Florida. April, a stripper, has brought her daughter to work at the Puma Club for Men. There she encounters Bassam, a foreign client both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club, and he’s drunk and angry and lonely. From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, and page-turning narrative that seizes the reader by the throat with psychological tension, depth, and realism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393068849
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	862,097
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Andre Dubus III is the author of The Garden of Last Days, House of Sand and Fog (a #1 New York Times bestseller, Oprah’s Book Club pick, and finalist for the National Book Award) and Townie, winner of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His writing has received many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. He lives with his family north of Boston.

Hometown:

Newbury, MA

Date of Birth:

1959

Place of Birth:

California

Education:

University of Texas at Austin

Editorial Reviews

This fascinating novel is a powerful look at connection and love played out inside of a strip club in Florida. The central character is April, a stripper forced to bring her child to work because her babysitter has a panic attack. A male narrator seems a poor choice, as a strong female performance would have captured the essence of the story far better. Dan John Miller reads clearly and with good pacing, but his deep monotone lacks emotion. While the writing is certainly first rate and the characters completely realistic, Miller fails to capture the listener's attention. A W.W. Norton hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 17). (June)

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Publishers Weekly

An explosive narrative employs a Florida strip club as a tinderbox of tensions on the weekend before 9/11. In similar fashion to his previous bestseller (House of Sand and Fog, 1999), Dubus shows a profound empathy as he gets inside the heads of a number of characters, with coincidence, chance and a clash of cultures building to a shattering climax. Through quick-cutting chapters (few longer than ten pages, many as short as one or two), he propels the action while providing the back stories that have brought these characters together for a night that will change their lives. April is an uncommonly sober-minded stripper and single mother who saves all her earnings to secure a better future for herself and her three-year-old daughter Franny. Jean is April's landlady and Franny's babysitter, a widow who shares her house more for the company than the extra income. She is also prone to panic attacks and may be a hypochondriac, an alcoholic or both. On the night in question, Jean is hospitalized and can't watch Franny. April reluctantly takes Franny to work, leaving her in a closed office while she goes to dance for customers. One of the clients is Bassam, a Muslim who pays extravagantly. Bassam berates April as immoral even as he lusts after her, and he keeps her from checking on her daughter. (Later his subplot has the most trouble meshing with the others.) Another customer is AJ, separated from the wife he has beaten and the son he loves, and now bounced from the club for getting too physical with one of the dancers. As their fates become inexorably intertwined, Dubus does a masterful job of allowing the reader to understand, if not forgive, why each character does what he or she does. Inthe process, he explores intricacies of faith and fate, love in its many dimensions (from maternal to sexual), the transactions through which men and women exert power over each other and the culture that shapes the characters and destinies of these individuals. Difficult to put down, impossible to forget. Agent: Philip Spitzer/Philip Spitzer Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews

"A very fast and entertaining read. . . . Every passage is expertly, elegantly achieved."

Philadelphia Inquirer - Madison Smart Bell

"Storytelling of the finest kind . . . [an] incandescent and absorbing novel."

Boston Sunday Globe

"Muscular and disquieting and turn-the-pages-so-fast-you-tear-them good."

Esquire

Dan John Miller is one of those narrators willing to stay in the background and allow the storyteller to take the spotlight. That is not a criticism, only an observation of his technique here. It's hard to argue with Miller's choice in the case of this novel, which rotates among a cast of characters, each seemingly doomed in some way. Most of the action takes place in a Florida strip club, where one of the main characters, a dancer named Spring, works. The other characters are a resentful, estranged husband, who will make a disastrous mistake, and a Saudi, who two days later will participate in the attacks of 9/11. Miller capably handles the accents during the occasional dialogue but is otherwise an understated performer. M.O. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 08 - AudioFile