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Tarfumes.com - The Garden of Last Days: A Novel
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $16.47
Your Save: $ 8.48 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780393041651
ISBN: 0393041654
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2008-06-02
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
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Editorial Reviews:
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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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Purchase Review
Comment: Book arrived promptly. Most importantly the book was in way better condition than described. I had to look for the tear that seller said the dust jacket had. Would certainly buy from this seller again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The need for patience and reading between the lines ...
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Can't understand this book being on Top of 2008 lists
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Loved it.
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Prune The Garden to Improve the Story
Comment: 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.
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