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The Garden of Last Days
Andre Dubus III 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, 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.
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.
535 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
196 people are currently reading
3704 people want to read
About the author
Andre Dubus III
39 books1,114 followersAndre 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 888 reviews
September 13, 2021
“It was not quite six yet, but parked up against the split-rail fence were pickup trucks and station wagons, a Mercedes next to three motorcycles next to a gray Lexus with gold trim. Always all kinds of men. It didn’t matter if they were in the trades or gave orders in a high-rise office, if they were married and had children or lived alone and had nobody – men were men and soon enough, it seemed, every one of them would find their way to the Puma or places like it. Most nights she felt nothing about them whatsoever; they were simply the objects of her work and she worked them. But tonight, she hated them too…”
- Andre Dubus III, The Garden of Last Days
The Garden of Last Days is a fascinating novel. In constructing it, Andre Dubus III plays the role of Dr. Frankenstein, jamming together two completely different books to form one larger book. Well, maybe “jamming” is too strong a word. He stitches them together as artfully as he can, doing his best to hide the seams. That does not change the reality that he has attempted to graft an arm onto a forehead.
The bulk of The Garden of Last Days, the “A” story, if you will, is reminiscent of Dubus’ demi-classic House of Sand and Fog. In both books, Dubus focuses his attention on people on the fringes of American life. What might cheaply be called the “seamy underside” of society. House of Sand and Fog pitted an unstable, recovering drug addict against a hard-working Iranian-American for control of a bungalow. Here, the characters are the employees and customers of a Florida strip club called the Puma Club for Men. As in the earlier novel, Dubus creates indelible portraits of people. His characters are drawn with such perception and insight, and are so grounded with human touches, that you barely notice as the plot creeps incrementally towards sheer ridiculousness.
The main player on this stage (both literally and figuratively) is April, stage name Spring. She is a recognizable archetype, though not quite the stripper with a heart of gold. She is beautiful, alluring, and a single mother to a young daughter named Franny. She hopes to make enough money to get out of the business.
One of the bouncers at the Puma Club is Lonnie. Lonnie is good at his job, able to spot “pockets” of trouble before they erupt. He also has an anger management problem, and tends to solve most issues by violent extension of his arm, hand closed into a fist. When he’s not physically assaulting people (there are still laws in strip clubs, even for bouncers), he likes to listen to classic books and poetry on audiotape. In other words, he’s Dalton from Road House, except he lacks the ability to tear a man’s throat from his neck.
AJ is one of the customers that Lonnie has his eye on. He has made a classic blunder, worse even than going into it against a Sicilian, with death on the line: falling in love with a person you pay to be nice to you. AJ has a young son, an estranged wife, an anger problem, a drinking problem, and a realizing-that-strippers-don’t-really-like-you problem. All these problems come to the surface at once.
Beyond the strip club, we are also introduced to Jean. She is an older woman, a widow, who tends a garden, rents space to April, and serves as a babysitter and surrogate grandma for Franny. On the day the novel begins (it covers only few days, from Thursday to Tuesday), Jean has gone to the hospital for an anxiety attack, leaving April without a sitter. So, April takes Fran to work. At the strip club. This, in screenwriting parlance, is the conflict. From this small event, the main story unspools in unexpected (and at times unbelievable) directions.
That’s one part of the book.
The other has to do with Bassam. Bassam is a Saudi. He has a lot of cash. He is in Florida learning how to fly airplanes. It is “Late Summer 2001”. More specifically, it is September 2001. If you haven’t figured out what Bassam is up to, let me be the first to welcome you to our world. It’s hot in summer, cold in winter, and etc.
Dubus tells his story utilizing a roving third-person viewpoint. This gives you the opportunity to slip into and out of the psyches of the major players. I think he is a fantastic writer. He is great with characterizations, adding depth and dimension to what at first blush seem stereotypes. He also does an excellent job at making the setting come to life. I could feel the Florida humidity; I could visualize every seedy corner of the Puma Club.
Despite his obvious talent, I am not entirely sure that Dubus is successful in combining April’s relatively small-scale domestic drama with the vast tragedy of September 11. I think it’s fascinating that he tried, but the two components do not gel. The major issue is that the two aren’t comparable in any respect. September 11 is a massive event with world-historical implications. It frankly overwhelms the April-centric storyline, making it feel almost absurd by comparison. It’s never a great idea to undercut your own plot. By the end, I found myself wondering why I was supposed to care about April at all, with nearly 3,000 people dead beneath a brilliantly blue and cloudless sky.
Moreover, the two separate threads do not really inform each other. Mostly, the narrative tracks run parallel, with only a brief intersection that is imbued with more meaning than it deserves. This is a novel that touches on a lot of ideas – masculinity, misogyny, parenthood – but never really develops them into meaningful themes.
The Garden of Last Days could have been split into two separate and rewarding novels. On its own, the April thread is a gritty local drama about rough-edged strivers struggling to gain a toehold of the dream. Also on its own, the Bassam thread is a marvelous, at times chilling evocation of the mind of a suicidal terrorist. Side by side they tend to diminish each other.
With all that said, the problems with The Garden of Last Days also makes it sort of irresistible. Perfection is boring. Flaws are interesting. This has a lot of flaws, but it keeps your attention. It is ambitious, testified to by the prodigious, 500-plus page length. It is also effortlessly readable, testified to by the speed at which I devoured those 500-plus pages.
With a book this big, tackling themes so large, you start to expect some profound statement of meaning. That’s not quite there. Perhaps the best way to approach this is accept – before you start – that this doesn’t quite work. Then, go on and enjoy.
- Andre Dubus III, The Garden of Last Days
The Garden of Last Days is a fascinating novel. In constructing it, Andre Dubus III plays the role of Dr. Frankenstein, jamming together two completely different books to form one larger book. Well, maybe “jamming” is too strong a word. He stitches them together as artfully as he can, doing his best to hide the seams. That does not change the reality that he has attempted to graft an arm onto a forehead.
The bulk of The Garden of Last Days, the “A” story, if you will, is reminiscent of Dubus’ demi-classic House of Sand and Fog. In both books, Dubus focuses his attention on people on the fringes of American life. What might cheaply be called the “seamy underside” of society. House of Sand and Fog pitted an unstable, recovering drug addict against a hard-working Iranian-American for control of a bungalow. Here, the characters are the employees and customers of a Florida strip club called the Puma Club for Men. As in the earlier novel, Dubus creates indelible portraits of people. His characters are drawn with such perception and insight, and are so grounded with human touches, that you barely notice as the plot creeps incrementally towards sheer ridiculousness.
The main player on this stage (both literally and figuratively) is April, stage name Spring. She is a recognizable archetype, though not quite the stripper with a heart of gold. She is beautiful, alluring, and a single mother to a young daughter named Franny. She hopes to make enough money to get out of the business.
One of the bouncers at the Puma Club is Lonnie. Lonnie is good at his job, able to spot “pockets” of trouble before they erupt. He also has an anger management problem, and tends to solve most issues by violent extension of his arm, hand closed into a fist. When he’s not physically assaulting people (there are still laws in strip clubs, even for bouncers), he likes to listen to classic books and poetry on audiotape. In other words, he’s Dalton from Road House, except he lacks the ability to tear a man’s throat from his neck.
AJ is one of the customers that Lonnie has his eye on. He has made a classic blunder, worse even than going into it against a Sicilian, with death on the line: falling in love with a person you pay to be nice to you. AJ has a young son, an estranged wife, an anger problem, a drinking problem, and a realizing-that-strippers-don’t-really-like-you problem. All these problems come to the surface at once.
Beyond the strip club, we are also introduced to Jean. She is an older woman, a widow, who tends a garden, rents space to April, and serves as a babysitter and surrogate grandma for Franny. On the day the novel begins (it covers only few days, from Thursday to Tuesday), Jean has gone to the hospital for an anxiety attack, leaving April without a sitter. So, April takes Fran to work. At the strip club. This, in screenwriting parlance, is the conflict. From this small event, the main story unspools in unexpected (and at times unbelievable) directions.
That’s one part of the book.
The other has to do with Bassam. Bassam is a Saudi. He has a lot of cash. He is in Florida learning how to fly airplanes. It is “Late Summer 2001”. More specifically, it is September 2001. If you haven’t figured out what Bassam is up to, let me be the first to welcome you to our world. It’s hot in summer, cold in winter, and etc.
Dubus tells his story utilizing a roving third-person viewpoint. This gives you the opportunity to slip into and out of the psyches of the major players. I think he is a fantastic writer. He is great with characterizations, adding depth and dimension to what at first blush seem stereotypes. He also does an excellent job at making the setting come to life. I could feel the Florida humidity; I could visualize every seedy corner of the Puma Club.
Despite his obvious talent, I am not entirely sure that Dubus is successful in combining April’s relatively small-scale domestic drama with the vast tragedy of September 11. I think it’s fascinating that he tried, but the two components do not gel. The major issue is that the two aren’t comparable in any respect. September 11 is a massive event with world-historical implications. It frankly overwhelms the April-centric storyline, making it feel almost absurd by comparison. It’s never a great idea to undercut your own plot. By the end, I found myself wondering why I was supposed to care about April at all, with nearly 3,000 people dead beneath a brilliantly blue and cloudless sky.
Moreover, the two separate threads do not really inform each other. Mostly, the narrative tracks run parallel, with only a brief intersection that is imbued with more meaning than it deserves. This is a novel that touches on a lot of ideas – masculinity, misogyny, parenthood – but never really develops them into meaningful themes.
The Garden of Last Days could have been split into two separate and rewarding novels. On its own, the April thread is a gritty local drama about rough-edged strivers struggling to gain a toehold of the dream. Also on its own, the Bassam thread is a marvelous, at times chilling evocation of the mind of a suicidal terrorist. Side by side they tend to diminish each other.
With all that said, the problems with The Garden of Last Days also makes it sort of irresistible. Perfection is boring. Flaws are interesting. This has a lot of flaws, but it keeps your attention. It is ambitious, testified to by the prodigious, 500-plus page length. It is also effortlessly readable, testified to by the speed at which I devoured those 500-plus pages.
With a book this big, tackling themes so large, you start to expect some profound statement of meaning. That’s not quite there. Perhaps the best way to approach this is accept – before you start – that this doesn’t quite work. Then, go on and enjoy.
October 18, 2016
3.5 stars
Scouring my beautiful but woefully understocked local library for anything recently published that I'd be interested in reading has led me (finally) to Andre Dubus III. Since I'd already seen the movie adaptation of House of Sand and Fog, I was much more intrigued by its only Dubus III shelfmate, The Garden of Last Days, a 2008 release with a whopping 95% fewer ratings on Goodreads than 1999's House of Sand and Fog. I needed to explore that disparity.
I'm guessing much of the novel's GR disfavor has to do with the subject matter and Dubus' choice of piling up a cast of less-than-sympathetic (okay, no, in a few cases, downright deplorable) characters. Who, really (besides pervs and deviants) would want to cozy up with a 535-page novel centered around a Sarasota, Florida strip club? Or one that features a few of the jihadis responsible for 9/11? Or one with glacial real-time pacing of the few days prior to 9/11?
I was dubious from the start (and the several DNF reviews I read didn't help matters, either) but I kept plowing through, wondering how the heck Dubus was going to pull this off. I'm not going to spend much time rehashing the (Quran onionskin-thin) plot, but this is primarily a character study anyway, rotating.between three characters making some rotten life choices: April (aka Spring), an earnest stripper/single mom from New Hampshire trying desperately to elevate herself above slinging Italian BMTs at Subway and build a life for herself and her daughter; AJ, a wayward lecher-in-training with anger issues, trying to rebound from from his marriage breakup (in the worst way possible); and Bassam, one of the jihadis (Allah only knows why this guy's hanging out at a strip club with the kufur and mushrikoons before entering Jannah, or the 'garden').
This is one brazen oddity of a novel, one I can't quite find the words to endorse (let alone convince others to even attempt reading it). It (mostly) worked for me, even as I found myself in a state of perma-cringe whilst reading. I applaud Dubus's verve and gutsiness in the attempt to explain the inexplicable. The novel appalled me, made me angry and uncomfortable, yet I can only see those things as the book's strengths. I'm glad I chose this as my first Dubus III experience, and looking forward to several more.
Scouring my beautiful but woefully understocked local library for anything recently published that I'd be interested in reading has led me (finally) to Andre Dubus III. Since I'd already seen the movie adaptation of House of Sand and Fog, I was much more intrigued by its only Dubus III shelfmate, The Garden of Last Days, a 2008 release with a whopping 95% fewer ratings on Goodreads than 1999's House of Sand and Fog. I needed to explore that disparity.
I'm guessing much of the novel's GR disfavor has to do with the subject matter and Dubus' choice of piling up a cast of less-than-sympathetic (okay, no, in a few cases, downright deplorable) characters. Who, really (besides pervs and deviants) would want to cozy up with a 535-page novel centered around a Sarasota, Florida strip club? Or one that features a few of the jihadis responsible for 9/11? Or one with glacial real-time pacing of the few days prior to 9/11?
I was dubious from the start (and the several DNF reviews I read didn't help matters, either) but I kept plowing through, wondering how the heck Dubus was going to pull this off. I'm not going to spend much time rehashing the (Quran onionskin-thin) plot, but this is primarily a character study anyway, rotating.between three characters making some rotten life choices: April (aka Spring), an earnest stripper/single mom from New Hampshire trying desperately to elevate herself above slinging Italian BMTs at Subway and build a life for herself and her daughter; AJ, a wayward lecher-in-training with anger issues, trying to rebound from from his marriage breakup (in the worst way possible); and Bassam, one of the jihadis (Allah only knows why this guy's hanging out at a strip club with the kufur and mushrikoons before entering Jannah, or the 'garden').
This is one brazen oddity of a novel, one I can't quite find the words to endorse (let alone convince others to even attempt reading it). It (mostly) worked for me, even as I found myself in a state of perma-cringe whilst reading. I applaud Dubus's verve and gutsiness in the attempt to explain the inexplicable. The novel appalled me, made me angry and uncomfortable, yet I can only see those things as the book's strengths. I'm glad I chose this as my first Dubus III experience, and looking forward to several more.
July 6, 2016
There were stories floating around at the time. That between the rental cars and the string of apartments, the visas, the wired funding, the flight lessons and the trial runs, the 9/11 hijackers had spent some nights in bars and strip clubs. And the mind sort of stops here to scratch its head. Mosques, yes. Prayer five times a day, yes. Hours in Internet cafes. Pouring over maps, purchasing tickets, boxcutters. Final manifestos scrawled right to left; pages and pages of religious paraphrasing. Difficult to envision within the meat of that scenario the bottle of beer, the running tab, the smoky table, the pole dance. It's that moment, that instant immediately preceding the leap to blame, when the intellect tricks to the fact that they'd been here for years. Some for two years, mixing and mingling, getting by, getting on, getting acclimated, acquainted with this fine country of mine and nothing - nothing - offered itself up as a worthy counter to that horrific plan. You'd like to think...but no, waste of time.
The Garden of Last Days pauses in that tricked instant of realization, the one that jangles so offensively upon the patriotic nerve.
Florida, 2001. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday - six early September days; the last days the country will feel quite so fundamentally secure. It's midnight at the Puma Club and here's April, the stripper. Young, magnificent, and intentionally out-of-touch with the cost of the professional choice she's made. Over there is Bassam, the Saudi, whose choice consumes him. Across the way is A.J., a construction worker and long-time patron, whose entrancement with dancer Marianne is not proving a sufficient distraction from his wife's fresh protection order and court-assigned anger management classes. In the corner, a watchful Lonnie, head of security, whose anger is managed by a skillful fist; a single punch powerful enough to lay the most disruptive drunk flat. And apart from it all, across town, is Jean - an elderly, overweight widow who has gratefully served as babysitter for April's toddler daughter but was forced to cancel on this Thursday night due to the sudden and most unwelcome appearance of her mortality. Three-year-old Franny (and April's working hard not to think too hard about this) has been brought by her mother to the club.
You can see the potential here. The child does not belong in this place. But neither does anyone else. Why, then, are they there?
With a series of swift and trenchant strikes through the minds and experiences of the major players, Dubus presents a deeply-drawn study of humiliation, rage and despair. He shows how these emotions imprison and entrench; how they coerce us into travelling a vicious circle, oscillating through polarized states of fantasy and fear. The lubrication of victimization, procrastination, and wildly delusional conviction. Agency collapsing before the maw of a primitive psychological hunger; will silenced, instinct ignored. It is a work rich in patterns of behavior and relentless, thudding, single lines of thought. This is existence on the ledge.
There was a single flaw for me in the internal voice he gifted to the toddler. I thought it too filled with recollection and connection - a process of perception that is barely mastered in adolescence and certainly unavailable to a three-year-old. Even if she's standing as a symbol, she must still be rooted in the earth, in realness, in life. But this was easy to forgive in the face of the rest of what the book offered.
Completely unexpected. Intense. Wrenchingly good.
The Garden of Last Days pauses in that tricked instant of realization, the one that jangles so offensively upon the patriotic nerve.
Florida, 2001. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday - six early September days; the last days the country will feel quite so fundamentally secure. It's midnight at the Puma Club and here's April, the stripper. Young, magnificent, and intentionally out-of-touch with the cost of the professional choice she's made. Over there is Bassam, the Saudi, whose choice consumes him. Across the way is A.J., a construction worker and long-time patron, whose entrancement with dancer Marianne is not proving a sufficient distraction from his wife's fresh protection order and court-assigned anger management classes. In the corner, a watchful Lonnie, head of security, whose anger is managed by a skillful fist; a single punch powerful enough to lay the most disruptive drunk flat. And apart from it all, across town, is Jean - an elderly, overweight widow who has gratefully served as babysitter for April's toddler daughter but was forced to cancel on this Thursday night due to the sudden and most unwelcome appearance of her mortality. Three-year-old Franny (and April's working hard not to think too hard about this) has been brought by her mother to the club.
You can see the potential here. The child does not belong in this place. But neither does anyone else. Why, then, are they there?
With a series of swift and trenchant strikes through the minds and experiences of the major players, Dubus presents a deeply-drawn study of humiliation, rage and despair. He shows how these emotions imprison and entrench; how they coerce us into travelling a vicious circle, oscillating through polarized states of fantasy and fear. The lubrication of victimization, procrastination, and wildly delusional conviction. Agency collapsing before the maw of a primitive psychological hunger; will silenced, instinct ignored. It is a work rich in patterns of behavior and relentless, thudding, single lines of thought. This is existence on the ledge.
There was a single flaw for me in the internal voice he gifted to the toddler. I thought it too filled with recollection and connection - a process of perception that is barely mastered in adolescence and certainly unavailable to a three-year-old. Even if she's standing as a symbol, she must still be rooted in the earth, in realness, in life. But this was easy to forgive in the face of the rest of what the book offered.
Completely unexpected. Intense. Wrenchingly good.
June 12, 2008
This book fits squarely into my category of a good idea poorly executed. The promise of the book lies in its gritty characters and the outward ripple into their lives from a point of chance intersection. And of course I was drawn by the clever concept of the chance intersection being taken from a footnote to the headlines of the biggest story of the young 21st Century.
But the execution is a big pile overwrought melodrama. My problem is that the prose is pedestrian and the story is drawn with a sledgehammer. The main barrier to my enjoyment of the narrative was way every detail of the characters previous lives is revealed through heavy-handed third-person telling by an omniscient narrator of each character's interior reminiscence on his or her past. Nothing is implied. All is narrated. If I had to pick one descriptor, the word I would choose is heavy-handed.
Like House of Sand and Fog, this book brings us into gritty lives of people trying to survive on the edges of society. That is a good thing done badly in this case.
But the execution is a big pile overwrought melodrama. My problem is that the prose is pedestrian and the story is drawn with a sledgehammer. The main barrier to my enjoyment of the narrative was way every detail of the characters previous lives is revealed through heavy-handed third-person telling by an omniscient narrator of each character's interior reminiscence on his or her past. Nothing is implied. All is narrated. If I had to pick one descriptor, the word I would choose is heavy-handed.
Like House of Sand and Fog, this book brings us into gritty lives of people trying to survive on the edges of society. That is a good thing done badly in this case.
August 10, 2009
Gripping me from the first page.
Dubus knows charcters so well,it is as if he grinds the human being down to the original dust and then scattters that dust across the page.
The back jacket blurb for this novel does not do it justice. This not a book about "where were you September 10,2001?". This is a book about the choices we make everyday that keep us and everyone around us holding on to what is our reality,sometimes with the edges of our fingernails.
Does this book have a deeper human lesson to be told? Indeed. Dubus, with his gift,does it in finest storyteller fashion. The stories have been told through the ages.
If you haven't read House of Sand and Fog read it, you will love it. If you loved it then read this, it is equally as compelling.
Dubus knows charcters so well,it is as if he grinds the human being down to the original dust and then scattters that dust across the page.
The back jacket blurb for this novel does not do it justice. This not a book about "where were you September 10,2001?". This is a book about the choices we make everyday that keep us and everyone around us holding on to what is our reality,sometimes with the edges of our fingernails.
Does this book have a deeper human lesson to be told? Indeed. Dubus, with his gift,does it in finest storyteller fashion. The stories have been told through the ages.
If you haven't read House of Sand and Fog read it, you will love it. If you loved it then read this, it is equally as compelling.
July 9, 2020
Good enough. But the weakest in Dubus's ouevre.
July 3, 2011
I don't know if I can finish this unrelentingly depressing book. Is it just me?
UPDATE: I have concluded that I will never finish this book and am removing it from my "currently reading list." Having read about 2/3s of it, I cannot stomach another page. I don't need this kind of stress in my reading life.
UPDATE: I have concluded that I will never finish this book and am removing it from my "currently reading list." Having read about 2/3s of it, I cannot stomach another page. I don't need this kind of stress in my reading life.
June 23, 2008
I am so annoyed with myself for wasting the hours I spent to read this. I had to force myself to pick it up every day. I loved Dubus's first book so much that I kept hoping this would get better and some characters would appear who would be even the slightest bit appealing or meaningful. Never happened. And yes, I know life has a seamy side, but that does not make this novel any more appealing. It made me feel dirty.
But the reviewers loooooove it.
Amazon says that this book is 384 pages but my ARC was over 500 pages. This raised my hopes that perhaps 100+ useless pages had been removed by an assiduous editor who realized that: the book was overwritten and boring; the characters were all low-lifes with few redeeming characteristics; one character was so unnecessary that it seemed like the author inserted him (awkwardly) into the story after he finished writing the book; the setting was just plain stupid and, as far as I am concerned, only used as a hook to drag in people who want to read about strip clubs; the premise was weak; the book and plot were disorganized; and the writing left a lot to be desired.
Much to my dismay, this was not the case. I went to my local bookstore today to investigate the "mystery of the pages".....and Amazon has the wrong info. The book is NOT 384 pages, but over 500, just like my ARC. Isn't this odd?
What a shame this was not up to the high standards, in every way, of "House of Sand and Fog". Too bad.
But the reviewers loooooove it.
Amazon says that this book is 384 pages but my ARC was over 500 pages. This raised my hopes that perhaps 100+ useless pages had been removed by an assiduous editor who realized that: the book was overwritten and boring; the characters were all low-lifes with few redeeming characteristics; one character was so unnecessary that it seemed like the author inserted him (awkwardly) into the story after he finished writing the book; the setting was just plain stupid and, as far as I am concerned, only used as a hook to drag in people who want to read about strip clubs; the premise was weak; the book and plot were disorganized; and the writing left a lot to be desired.
Much to my dismay, this was not the case. I went to my local bookstore today to investigate the "mystery of the pages".....and Amazon has the wrong info. The book is NOT 384 pages, but over 500, just like my ARC. Isn't this odd?
What a shame this was not up to the high standards, in every way, of "House of Sand and Fog". Too bad.
October 5, 2024
Well, I read all the other GoodReads reviews and don't have much to add. There are lots of sharp insights below.
In short, yes this was a book told from probably too many perspectives (I counted at least 9 distinct points of view), there was a bit of over-writing, and there is powerlessness/over-sexualization attached to some of the female characters. And the September 11th terrorist sub-plot borders on the ridiculous...but...I liked it.
I like a chunky book. I like a book with a strong sense of place (Florida). And even if someone of the characters' inner dialogue sounded similar to others, there was still at least some emotional core to the book, and at least once voice that sounded fully fleshed out (even if it took multiple POVs to make it whole).
I thought the contribution of the terrorist character alone, while gimmicky, was still interesting, as we don't have much of a canon built up yet that contains the rationale/motivation for the people involved in September 11th. And while the characterization of both April and AJ was very, very close to the line in terms of class stereotype, it was still ultimately more sympathetic and expository in a way I found useful.
And Dubus is an excellent writer at the sentence level. This was an enjoyable, fast and thought provoking read for me despite some of the more distracting bells and whistles.
In short, yes this was a book told from probably too many perspectives (I counted at least 9 distinct points of view), there was a bit of over-writing, and there is powerlessness/over-sexualization attached to some of the female characters. And the September 11th terrorist sub-plot borders on the ridiculous...but...I liked it.
I like a chunky book. I like a book with a strong sense of place (Florida). And even if someone of the characters' inner dialogue sounded similar to others, there was still at least some emotional core to the book, and at least once voice that sounded fully fleshed out (even if it took multiple POVs to make it whole).
I thought the contribution of the terrorist character alone, while gimmicky, was still interesting, as we don't have much of a canon built up yet that contains the rationale/motivation for the people involved in September 11th. And while the characterization of both April and AJ was very, very close to the line in terms of class stereotype, it was still ultimately more sympathetic and expository in a way I found useful.
And Dubus is an excellent writer at the sentence level. This was an enjoyable, fast and thought provoking read for me despite some of the more distracting bells and whistles.
November 1, 2020
I bought this book in 2009. I know this because I found the receipt in the book. A receipt from Borders (how I miss you Borders.) I don't remember buying it so I don't know what drew me to it. All these years I thought it was about a Jewish family pre-Holocaust when things were getting dicey for Jews in Europe.
It's about some very sleazy subjects. A girl with a daughter who works in a strip club, an extreme Muslim who has crazy ideas of what Allah expects from him and a man who has been thrown out of his child's life for physically abusing his wife. Yuck, right? These three characters converge at the strip club and nothing good comes from it.
However, the writing is so well done, the weaving of story lines so well executed, that it elevated material I would normally find extremely distasteful, even verging on the pornographic, to be a solid story of some of life's biggest losers or to put it more nicely, people who have lost their way so completely, there is no way back. I couldn't stop turning the pages to see what was going to happen next.
It's about some very sleazy subjects. A girl with a daughter who works in a strip club, an extreme Muslim who has crazy ideas of what Allah expects from him and a man who has been thrown out of his child's life for physically abusing his wife. Yuck, right? These three characters converge at the strip club and nothing good comes from it.
However, the writing is so well done, the weaving of story lines so well executed, that it elevated material I would normally find extremely distasteful, even verging on the pornographic, to be a solid story of some of life's biggest losers or to put it more nicely, people who have lost their way so completely, there is no way back. I couldn't stop turning the pages to see what was going to happen next.
May 3, 2009
After awhile, I became convinced that Andre Dubus III was doing this on purpose: Oprah-endorsed writer pens insanely long and boring novel filled with the minutia of 5-7 strangers whose path's intersect one dramatic night at a titty bar in Florida.
This novel, "The Garden of Last Days," is senselessly slow and senselessly long. A wise man once said that no song should be longer than 4 minutes, unless there is a really good reason. I believe that a book should be no longer than 300 pages, unless there is a really good reason.
April, a single-mother slash stripper who goes by the name "Spring." But she's not a dirty stripper, she's a wholesome stripper, investing in her future; Jean is April's landlord, who frequently babysits April's daughter Frannie; Lonnie is a bouncer at the club. He's got it bad for April; AJ is what his mother would call a "good boy" who frequently makes bad decisions; Bassam is a naughty terrorist hanging out at the club, torn between titillation and self-loathing, in the days before he will hijack an airplane.
April is forced to bring 3-year-old Frannie to work when Jean gets laid up with a panic attack. The stripper plops the kid in a back room with the club's den mother and mermaid movies, then does a show. She snags Bassam, thick with cash, who requests VIP treatment in the back room. Mostly he just wants to talk and touch her C-Section scar, and throw hundos at the stripper. In the meantime, AJ has been kicked out of the club for touching a dancer, his wrist broken for the infraction. He's pissed, filled with Wild Turkey and beer, and trying to change some of his recent bad luck. He finds Frannie wandering around in the parking lot and takes her with him. He convinces himself that he is trying to save her from what is obviously a horrible home life with that bitch of a mother.
This is just a strange combination of characters, with two plot lines that could not be linked except that Bassam happened upon April's strip club. Most of the action involving April-Frannie-AJ ends, and there is still a hunk of book left, which means now we're just waiting for Bassam to do his thing -- which is obviously no surprise at all. And when he does, it's very subtle and anticlimactic. A lot of this reads like the notes a writer would take to familiarize himself with his characters. The stuff that should be hidden in the closet when the guests come to visit.
I'm not sure what this book is supposed to be. A post-9/11 novel? A Lifetime Original Movie about a young stripper who's just trying to make a better life for her baby? Or why Dubus attempted to make it both. The more-interesting story is the relationship between April, Frannie and Jean. The Bassam stuff is okay, as he battles his natural urges in hopes for maintaining some sort of purity. Together, it's like a strawberry and olive sandwich.
This novel, "The Garden of Last Days," is senselessly slow and senselessly long. A wise man once said that no song should be longer than 4 minutes, unless there is a really good reason. I believe that a book should be no longer than 300 pages, unless there is a really good reason.
April, a single-mother slash stripper who goes by the name "Spring." But she's not a dirty stripper, she's a wholesome stripper, investing in her future; Jean is April's landlord, who frequently babysits April's daughter Frannie; Lonnie is a bouncer at the club. He's got it bad for April; AJ is what his mother would call a "good boy" who frequently makes bad decisions; Bassam is a naughty terrorist hanging out at the club, torn between titillation and self-loathing, in the days before he will hijack an airplane.
April is forced to bring 3-year-old Frannie to work when Jean gets laid up with a panic attack. The stripper plops the kid in a back room with the club's den mother and mermaid movies, then does a show. She snags Bassam, thick with cash, who requests VIP treatment in the back room. Mostly he just wants to talk and touch her C-Section scar, and throw hundos at the stripper. In the meantime, AJ has been kicked out of the club for touching a dancer, his wrist broken for the infraction. He's pissed, filled with Wild Turkey and beer, and trying to change some of his recent bad luck. He finds Frannie wandering around in the parking lot and takes her with him. He convinces himself that he is trying to save her from what is obviously a horrible home life with that bitch of a mother.
This is just a strange combination of characters, with two plot lines that could not be linked except that Bassam happened upon April's strip club. Most of the action involving April-Frannie-AJ ends, and there is still a hunk of book left, which means now we're just waiting for Bassam to do his thing -- which is obviously no surprise at all. And when he does, it's very subtle and anticlimactic. A lot of this reads like the notes a writer would take to familiarize himself with his characters. The stuff that should be hidden in the closet when the guests come to visit.
I'm not sure what this book is supposed to be. A post-9/11 novel? A Lifetime Original Movie about a young stripper who's just trying to make a better life for her baby? Or why Dubus attempted to make it both. The more-interesting story is the relationship between April, Frannie and Jean. The Bassam stuff is okay, as he battles his natural urges in hopes for maintaining some sort of purity. Together, it's like a strawberry and olive sandwich.
Read
December 9, 2008I taught this book in my course on 9/11 literature, though it has less (directly) to do with that infamous day than the other books in the course did. Yet 9/11 weighs heavily on the narrative. It takes place largely in and around a seedy Florida strip club (I realize there is at least one redundancy in that phrase). It's really a series of character studies. I've read everything by Andre and consider him a friend: he made a second visit to campus this semester at my request and visited two of my classes. A terrific guy. I've read everything he's written and I'm impressed by the way he continues to stretch his wings: since an early collection of short stories, his books have gotten progressively longer. He creates worlds that the reader can inhabit. His characters are people who make mistakes then, once they've realized they've made mistakes, make more. They're characters in quicksand who don't realize that they shouldn't try to run.
April 19, 2017
This story, a mix of fact and fiction, takes place during the days just before 9/11, that tragedy serving more as the context rather than the driver of the narrative.
April is a stripper who works at the Puma Club for Men under the stage name of Spring. She is divorced, a single mother with a three year old daughter named Franny. Jean is April’s kind landlady who lives nearby and babysits Franny while her mother works, but Jean is not available on this particular night as she has been hospitalized for palpitations and is undergoing tests. April does not have a backup plan for another sitter and she reluctantly takes Franny to her workplace, leaving her with a co-worker in the backroom while she puts on her show and entertains the men in the front rooms. She knows Franny is well behaved and will be fine with her books, her toys and her Disney videos. She asks one of the older women to keep an eye on her daughter and says she will be back to check on her throughout the evening. But April becomes distracted by Bassam, a foreign customer with poor English who seems attracted to her and has a fistful of cash. He is openly waving hundred dollar bills around, intent on letting it leave his hands and April is hoping to get a share of that easy money. She leads him into the secluded Champagne Room, one of the club’s private rooms for a two hour session where she gives him private provocative dances trying to separate him from the cash she eagerly covets. But he just wants to talk and April, experienced at this, knows how to please her customers. If he just wants to talk or have her listen to him, she can do that too.
Meanwhile at the same club, A.J. Carey, a down and out construction worker, has been thrown out to the parking lot by the bouncers for breaking one of the club’s cardinal rules, touching one of the dancers. He is out there sulking in his parked car in considerable pain, nursing his wrist which was broken in the scuffle. He is sipping on a bottle of Wild Turkey as he deals with his rage at what has happened and the growing pain in his wrist. As he considers an act of revenge, little Franny suddenly appears in the parking lot, having wandered the back rooms looking for her mother. When April finally has a chance to go back and check on her daughter and discovers she is missing, she panics and the narrative quickly picks up its pace. Suddenly April is screaming and everyone is frantically searching for the lost little girl as the police are called, a frantic search for Franny is begun, AJ is accused of kidnapping and Bassam heads to the Boston airport for his date with destiny.
The characters of April and A.J. are expertly developed and come across as people resentful of their present lives. They mull over their circumstances, annoyed and indignant that nothing has turned out the way they had planned. Neither of the two is in the place they expected to be at this time in their lives. April has separated from a husband who preferred drugs to his family and so she and her daughter are now on their own without his financial support. She is obsessed with money and most of what she makes she stashes away in hopes of a better life. She plans to give up stripping once she has enough to give Franny and herself a decent and comfortable life but although she has thousands in the bank, she never feels what she has is enough. April is not ashamed of what she does for a living. She does it not just because it is easy cash but because it makes her feel good about herself. Not everyone can do what she does and do it well and the fact she has found something she can do better than others gives her a sense of satisfaction. Although there are many other girls prettier than she is, April is convinced she is smarter than most of them. She doesn’t spend her money on alcohol or drugs, she banks it because she has a plan and she sticks to it.
When A.J. sees little Franny wandering in the parking lot, he is aghast that a young child has been left in such a tawdry place where she could be hit by a car, hurt by a drunk or carried off by someone with even more evil intentions. He picks her up intending only to protect her, but the liquor he has been sipping to dull the pain in his wrist has clouded his judgement. He soon realizes that no one will ever believe he has this small child in the back of his truck because he wants to protect her. Not sure what to do and needing ice for his painful wrist, he decides to visit his wife Deena from whom he is separated. She has a restraining order against him for physically abusing her and this visit is clearly in violation of that order. Nevertheless he goes ahead, using this opportunity to peak in on his sleeping son and begging Deena to take him back. By the time he leaves Deena his wrist is throbbing and he knows he will not be able to work the next day. There will be embarrassing questions that will be difficult to answer. He can’t afford to be without his salary so he decides to fabricate a workplace accident and sue the construction company. As he rambles about in his truck, going from one place to another but essentially going nowhere, he groans and complains about life and how it has treated him.
The third character in the story is Bassam, a Sunni extremist from Saudi Arabia who is the youngest member of his family and has several brothers and sisters. Unlike his siblings, Bassam has never done well at school, while they are all at university or soon headed in that direction. Bassam has a fragile and tenuous relationship with his father and the two have very conflicting ideas about religion and Jihad.
Bassam is convinced he has no future in this world, but he has now been entrusted with something precious, an act which will be a gift to his family and his kingdom. He believes what he intends to do will provide him with the first steps on the path to a marriage in heaven and a happy life there, a thought that fills him with supreme peace. He is now on a train that cannot be stopped and will be doing something good, his personal sacrifice ensuring the sins of seventy members of his family will be erased. He has been convinced they will be proud that he is their son and brother, forever thankful to him for what he is about to do.
But during his stay in America, Bassam and the other members of his team have sampled the many pleasures of American life, pleasures they were strictly denied back home. They have all grown to love the alcohol, the cigarettes and the scantily dressed women who they complain about but constantly leer at, unable to keep their hungry eyes away from the flesh so openly available. Over the days and weeks in this sinful country called America filled with infidels, they have come to want what has always been refused them. Bassam worries about this, knowing it has made him weak and impure. He has undergone months of preparation, training, practice, and prayer to complete this mission, and although he is not always comfortable with what they plan to do, especially the part with the razors, he prays for resolve and strength.
Bassam is the character we know the least despite the Arabic phrases and his ongoing stream of conscious dialogue. He comes across as the typical angry young Muslim fundamentalist with doubts about his cause who has nothing else in life to look forward to and so quickly overcomes his traitorous thoughts and keeps to the mission he has been trained to carry out. We already know what happens to Bassam. His character is based on the facts gathered about members of the Al- Qaida cell who took flying lessons in Florida, went to Boston’s Logan airport to hijack a plane and flew it into The Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Despite knowing how these events played out, Dubus has managed to maintain a certain amount of tension in the narrative as he explores the thoughts of the terrorists before their sacred mission.
What Bassam’s character does share with April and A.J. is the sense he is simply a victim of circumstance, a small cog in a world in which he longs to play a bigger part. But the author’s efforts to engage us with Bassam falter as the reader never really accepts him. Even the sense of his difficult childhood back in Saudi Arabia trying to find a place in his large family with his more successful siblings and a father he can’t connect with, do not help us embrace this youth or his horrific acts. As he lives out the hours before his mission, we come to view him with distaste as he uses his money not only to gain his own pleasure but as a means to taunt and humiliate April and the other strippers at the club.
The reader feels differently about April and A.J. who both elicit some measure of our sympathy. Despite April’s lack of judgement in taking her young daughter to the strip club, we know she loves Franny dearly and is devoted to her. Even A.J., the embittered loser who is drowning in self-pity and beats his wife has only kind thoughts as he grabs Fanny from the parking lot, believing he is protecting her and rescuing her from danger. He treats her tenderly and with concern even when he is frustrated as she cries out for her mother. We even develop feelings for the secondary characters, Jean the widow and babysitter who adores Franny and Lonnie the bouncer with a simmering anger problem who tries to protect and help April. They at least gain our thoughtful attention, understanding and concern.
This story closely follows the facts about how the terrorists spent their time in Florida before flying from Boston to New York. But this is not a story about 9/11 or even about Bassam the character based on one of the terrorists. It is more clearly a story about April and A.J,. with 9/11 serving as the backdrop for the devolution of their meaningless and unsatisfying lives. Even after the horrific event, when April is questioned about the man she spent a few short hours with in the Champagne Room, she describes him only as she remembers him, simply as a drunk and lonely boy.
This was an interesting read. And for those who appreciate it, just a warning: there are several pages of explicit sexual content, none of it violent and all appropriate to the narrative.
April is a stripper who works at the Puma Club for Men under the stage name of Spring. She is divorced, a single mother with a three year old daughter named Franny. Jean is April’s kind landlady who lives nearby and babysits Franny while her mother works, but Jean is not available on this particular night as she has been hospitalized for palpitations and is undergoing tests. April does not have a backup plan for another sitter and she reluctantly takes Franny to her workplace, leaving her with a co-worker in the backroom while she puts on her show and entertains the men in the front rooms. She knows Franny is well behaved and will be fine with her books, her toys and her Disney videos. She asks one of the older women to keep an eye on her daughter and says she will be back to check on her throughout the evening. But April becomes distracted by Bassam, a foreign customer with poor English who seems attracted to her and has a fistful of cash. He is openly waving hundred dollar bills around, intent on letting it leave his hands and April is hoping to get a share of that easy money. She leads him into the secluded Champagne Room, one of the club’s private rooms for a two hour session where she gives him private provocative dances trying to separate him from the cash she eagerly covets. But he just wants to talk and April, experienced at this, knows how to please her customers. If he just wants to talk or have her listen to him, she can do that too.
Meanwhile at the same club, A.J. Carey, a down and out construction worker, has been thrown out to the parking lot by the bouncers for breaking one of the club’s cardinal rules, touching one of the dancers. He is out there sulking in his parked car in considerable pain, nursing his wrist which was broken in the scuffle. He is sipping on a bottle of Wild Turkey as he deals with his rage at what has happened and the growing pain in his wrist. As he considers an act of revenge, little Franny suddenly appears in the parking lot, having wandered the back rooms looking for her mother. When April finally has a chance to go back and check on her daughter and discovers she is missing, she panics and the narrative quickly picks up its pace. Suddenly April is screaming and everyone is frantically searching for the lost little girl as the police are called, a frantic search for Franny is begun, AJ is accused of kidnapping and Bassam heads to the Boston airport for his date with destiny.
The characters of April and A.J. are expertly developed and come across as people resentful of their present lives. They mull over their circumstances, annoyed and indignant that nothing has turned out the way they had planned. Neither of the two is in the place they expected to be at this time in their lives. April has separated from a husband who preferred drugs to his family and so she and her daughter are now on their own without his financial support. She is obsessed with money and most of what she makes she stashes away in hopes of a better life. She plans to give up stripping once she has enough to give Franny and herself a decent and comfortable life but although she has thousands in the bank, she never feels what she has is enough. April is not ashamed of what she does for a living. She does it not just because it is easy cash but because it makes her feel good about herself. Not everyone can do what she does and do it well and the fact she has found something she can do better than others gives her a sense of satisfaction. Although there are many other girls prettier than she is, April is convinced she is smarter than most of them. She doesn’t spend her money on alcohol or drugs, she banks it because she has a plan and she sticks to it.
When A.J. sees little Franny wandering in the parking lot, he is aghast that a young child has been left in such a tawdry place where she could be hit by a car, hurt by a drunk or carried off by someone with even more evil intentions. He picks her up intending only to protect her, but the liquor he has been sipping to dull the pain in his wrist has clouded his judgement. He soon realizes that no one will ever believe he has this small child in the back of his truck because he wants to protect her. Not sure what to do and needing ice for his painful wrist, he decides to visit his wife Deena from whom he is separated. She has a restraining order against him for physically abusing her and this visit is clearly in violation of that order. Nevertheless he goes ahead, using this opportunity to peak in on his sleeping son and begging Deena to take him back. By the time he leaves Deena his wrist is throbbing and he knows he will not be able to work the next day. There will be embarrassing questions that will be difficult to answer. He can’t afford to be without his salary so he decides to fabricate a workplace accident and sue the construction company. As he rambles about in his truck, going from one place to another but essentially going nowhere, he groans and complains about life and how it has treated him.
The third character in the story is Bassam, a Sunni extremist from Saudi Arabia who is the youngest member of his family and has several brothers and sisters. Unlike his siblings, Bassam has never done well at school, while they are all at university or soon headed in that direction. Bassam has a fragile and tenuous relationship with his father and the two have very conflicting ideas about religion and Jihad.
Bassam is convinced he has no future in this world, but he has now been entrusted with something precious, an act which will be a gift to his family and his kingdom. He believes what he intends to do will provide him with the first steps on the path to a marriage in heaven and a happy life there, a thought that fills him with supreme peace. He is now on a train that cannot be stopped and will be doing something good, his personal sacrifice ensuring the sins of seventy members of his family will be erased. He has been convinced they will be proud that he is their son and brother, forever thankful to him for what he is about to do.
But during his stay in America, Bassam and the other members of his team have sampled the many pleasures of American life, pleasures they were strictly denied back home. They have all grown to love the alcohol, the cigarettes and the scantily dressed women who they complain about but constantly leer at, unable to keep their hungry eyes away from the flesh so openly available. Over the days and weeks in this sinful country called America filled with infidels, they have come to want what has always been refused them. Bassam worries about this, knowing it has made him weak and impure. He has undergone months of preparation, training, practice, and prayer to complete this mission, and although he is not always comfortable with what they plan to do, especially the part with the razors, he prays for resolve and strength.
Bassam is the character we know the least despite the Arabic phrases and his ongoing stream of conscious dialogue. He comes across as the typical angry young Muslim fundamentalist with doubts about his cause who has nothing else in life to look forward to and so quickly overcomes his traitorous thoughts and keeps to the mission he has been trained to carry out. We already know what happens to Bassam. His character is based on the facts gathered about members of the Al- Qaida cell who took flying lessons in Florida, went to Boston’s Logan airport to hijack a plane and flew it into The Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Despite knowing how these events played out, Dubus has managed to maintain a certain amount of tension in the narrative as he explores the thoughts of the terrorists before their sacred mission.
What Bassam’s character does share with April and A.J. is the sense he is simply a victim of circumstance, a small cog in a world in which he longs to play a bigger part. But the author’s efforts to engage us with Bassam falter as the reader never really accepts him. Even the sense of his difficult childhood back in Saudi Arabia trying to find a place in his large family with his more successful siblings and a father he can’t connect with, do not help us embrace this youth or his horrific acts. As he lives out the hours before his mission, we come to view him with distaste as he uses his money not only to gain his own pleasure but as a means to taunt and humiliate April and the other strippers at the club.
The reader feels differently about April and A.J. who both elicit some measure of our sympathy. Despite April’s lack of judgement in taking her young daughter to the strip club, we know she loves Franny dearly and is devoted to her. Even A.J., the embittered loser who is drowning in self-pity and beats his wife has only kind thoughts as he grabs Fanny from the parking lot, believing he is protecting her and rescuing her from danger. He treats her tenderly and with concern even when he is frustrated as she cries out for her mother. We even develop feelings for the secondary characters, Jean the widow and babysitter who adores Franny and Lonnie the bouncer with a simmering anger problem who tries to protect and help April. They at least gain our thoughtful attention, understanding and concern.
This story closely follows the facts about how the terrorists spent their time in Florida before flying from Boston to New York. But this is not a story about 9/11 or even about Bassam the character based on one of the terrorists. It is more clearly a story about April and A.J,. with 9/11 serving as the backdrop for the devolution of their meaningless and unsatisfying lives. Even after the horrific event, when April is questioned about the man she spent a few short hours with in the Champagne Room, she describes him only as she remembers him, simply as a drunk and lonely boy.
This was an interesting read. And for those who appreciate it, just a warning: there are several pages of explicit sexual content, none of it violent and all appropriate to the narrative.
May 29, 2010
The Garden of Last Days is a perfect literary example of masterful storytelling. It doesn't matter that the book is lengthier than average at over 530 pages because you won't notice it or feel overwhelmed; you'll simply enjoy the reading experience.
Andre Dubus III opens The Garden of Last Days on a lazy Florida afternoon and we are introduced to April and Franny; a single young woman who works for a strip club and her three-year old daughter. April's usual babysitter, Jean, is in the hospital, and because April cannot risk calling in sick, she must take her daughter Franny with her to the strip club where she will be watched by the club's "house-mother". As readers can presume, a strip-club is no place for a toddler, and drama ensues when Franny goes missing.
The entire book takes place within a span of about five days; its plot centralized around April and Franny, and comprised of chapters and intimate glances at a cast of very involved and colorful characters.
We have:
Lonnie- a bouncer at the strip-club with feelings for April
A.J.- an alcoholic kicked out of the club that night for rough behavior
Deena- A.J.'s estranged wife
Virginia- A.J.'s ailing and ignorant mother
Jean- April's tenant and babysitter
Bassam- an Egyptian with plans to terrorize the United States
Together, these characters weave a story and chain of events that cause quite the butterfly effect and will make us re-evaluate the actions and decisions we make on a daily basis.
As a reader, I am pleasantly surprised and ecstatic that despite its length, this novel does not have any lulls. The chapters and breaks occur at just the right times and in its entirety is written in a fashion that will keep you addicted until you finish.
My only disappointment in The Garden of Last Days is its ending based on true events. The novel is so well-written and I would rather have liked to see originality and more of a fictional ending. I think this book is infinitely better than House of Sand and Fog, which was a sleeper for me that I couldn't finish. If you were also put off by House of Sand and Fog, don't let it prevent you from picking The Garden of Last Days.
Any lover of literature and drama should read this book. Put it on your wish list if you haven't already!
Andre Dubus III's first novel is entitled Bluesman, and he is due to release his autobiography in 2011 entitled Townie.
For more book reviews visit http://dreamworldbooks.com.
Andre Dubus III opens The Garden of Last Days on a lazy Florida afternoon and we are introduced to April and Franny; a single young woman who works for a strip club and her three-year old daughter. April's usual babysitter, Jean, is in the hospital, and because April cannot risk calling in sick, she must take her daughter Franny with her to the strip club where she will be watched by the club's "house-mother". As readers can presume, a strip-club is no place for a toddler, and drama ensues when Franny goes missing.
The entire book takes place within a span of about five days; its plot centralized around April and Franny, and comprised of chapters and intimate glances at a cast of very involved and colorful characters.
We have:
Lonnie- a bouncer at the strip-club with feelings for April
A.J.- an alcoholic kicked out of the club that night for rough behavior
Deena- A.J.'s estranged wife
Virginia- A.J.'s ailing and ignorant mother
Jean- April's tenant and babysitter
Bassam- an Egyptian with plans to terrorize the United States
Together, these characters weave a story and chain of events that cause quite the butterfly effect and will make us re-evaluate the actions and decisions we make on a daily basis.
As a reader, I am pleasantly surprised and ecstatic that despite its length, this novel does not have any lulls. The chapters and breaks occur at just the right times and in its entirety is written in a fashion that will keep you addicted until you finish.
My only disappointment in The Garden of Last Days is its ending based on true events. The novel is so well-written and I would rather have liked to see originality and more of a fictional ending. I think this book is infinitely better than House of Sand and Fog, which was a sleeper for me that I couldn't finish. If you were also put off by House of Sand and Fog, don't let it prevent you from picking The Garden of Last Days.
Any lover of literature and drama should read this book. Put it on your wish list if you haven't already!
Andre Dubus III's first novel is entitled Bluesman, and he is due to release his autobiography in 2011 entitled Townie.
For more book reviews visit http://dreamworldbooks.com.
February 13, 2015
A 2008 novel my book club recently selected for an upcoming discussion. (I didn't tell them that I'd decided years ago to skip this one.) I started reading in good faith and with a mind if not open at least ajar, but knew by page 30 it's not the sort of fiction I'd want to stay with for 544 pages. I actually like Dubus! - His memoir Townie is a stunner, House of Sand and Fog was interesting (if "bloated"), Dirty Love is a to-read, and he seems like the nicest guy in interviews I've heard. But this was too full of stereotypes and cliches and long-winded descriptions of minutiae that left me cold and rolling my eyes in boredom.
May 21, 2019
So many people like the writing of Andre Dubus III, I am not one of them. Second book of his I have tried to read and second book of his I did not finish. Years ago I had a strict "finish what you started" policy. But as I've gotten older I realized this does not have to apply to books, and this book was a huge case in point. It's long, a third of the way through and still no point, so much repetition and rehashing of the same thoughts over and over. There are just too many other good books out there that I can't wait to let my brain digest.
February 24, 2015
I loved this book. While it explores the gritty world of a single mother who happens to be a stripper - the love she has for her daughter and what she must do to keep her makes this a moving story with excellent character development.
April 10, 2012
If I were to tell you what happens in this book, it would take 2 sentences. Those 2 sentences might bore the hell out of you. But it is almost entirely in a strip club...
October 31, 2017
Fantastic read about an American stripper and the nine-eleven hijackers. April comes alive in this page-turner
October 31, 2018
Please do not think about this book as a novel about 911 or about getting inside the head of a terrorist-- it is much more-- it is the story of a handful of marginalized people whose lives might have taken a different turn at any point. The tension is palpable, because it could all end so badly, but each charcter's story concludes sometimes unexpectedly, always credibly
It is gripping, with characters and situations that grab and hold. The structure of alternating the focus of the chapters among several key characters both holds the plot together and gives background and an understanding of the psychological aspects of all the major characters. The short chapters at the end enhance the rush to doom that one has felt from the beginning, since we know that the climax of the book is the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. And, we know that one of the hijackers was, in actuality, spending his time prior to the event in strip clubs in Florida.
The book did get quite salacious at times, and overly long with Muslim rantings that most readers(including me) will not really understand, but overall the book was excellent.
It is gripping, with characters and situations that grab and hold. The structure of alternating the focus of the chapters among several key characters both holds the plot together and gives background and an understanding of the psychological aspects of all the major characters. The short chapters at the end enhance the rush to doom that one has felt from the beginning, since we know that the climax of the book is the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. And, we know that one of the hijackers was, in actuality, spending his time prior to the event in strip clubs in Florida.
The book did get quite salacious at times, and overly long with Muslim rantings that most readers(including me) will not really understand, but overall the book was excellent.
July 4, 2008
I read this book cover to cover, which attests to its efficient prose despite its 500+ page length. Andre Dubus' trick is to advance the action of the loosely interlocking characters in cinematic mini-chapters, each time completely inhabiting the persona and neuroses of its subject.
Dubus is an accomplished observer and has clearly researched his Floridian subjects well. Especially fascinating are his antiheroes, a down-on-his-luck contractor and father trying to find a way to do right in all the wrong ways, and an aspiring Jihadi terrorist modeled on Mohamed Atta. Equally developed are a strip club dancer/single mother and her landlord, a widowed retiree who functions as a second parent for her tenant's daughter.
The story doesn't crescendo or conclude with anything bold or particularly unnerving, as Dubus nervously skirts denouement, instead hoping the contrasting vibes of his characters will create a kind of minor harmony that outlives the last page. Unfortunately, like most page turners, the spell is broken whenever the spine is closed.
Dubus is an accomplished observer and has clearly researched his Floridian subjects well. Especially fascinating are his antiheroes, a down-on-his-luck contractor and father trying to find a way to do right in all the wrong ways, and an aspiring Jihadi terrorist modeled on Mohamed Atta. Equally developed are a strip club dancer/single mother and her landlord, a widowed retiree who functions as a second parent for her tenant's daughter.
The story doesn't crescendo or conclude with anything bold or particularly unnerving, as Dubus nervously skirts denouement, instead hoping the contrasting vibes of his characters will create a kind of minor harmony that outlives the last page. Unfortunately, like most page turners, the spell is broken whenever the spine is closed.
June 26, 2008
Zzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry! I must have fallen asleep while reading this 400+ page book that is basically pointless and totally ponderous. The characters weren't very interesting and by the end, I didn't really care about any of them and what happened. Don't waste your time on this one.
January 20, 2021
A rather quirky book with a title that promises much but that seems to take an age to get anywhere. The plot though is fairly solid. The backstories of the characters although a necessary part of the story do seem to drag on interminably but this has more to do with overdescription than anything. One wonders just how all this could be relevant and seems to me more an attempt to pad out page numbers than making a meaningful contribution. The conclusion was a bit wading through mud in the darkness, just floundering about trying to put connections together to reach solid ground. It may be a while before I read more from this author.
March 25, 2019
Good book but a little disjointed at times. I did like the pace and the portrayal of the strippers joint and great character building of the characters
August 3, 2024
Reading "The Garden of Last Days" triggered thoughts of Hieronymus Bosch's painting, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," which I happened to see a few years ago at the Prado in Madrid, Spain.
In three surrealist panels, Bosch illustrates when God brought Adam and Eve to the beautiful, lush Garden of Eden. In the second panel, the world is already over-populated and filled with naked people indulging in pleasure and excess. In the final panel, the images are dark and horrific.
I have no idea if Dubus meant to refer to this painting in the title of his book, but "The Garden of Last Days" presents a picture of a complex society today driven by excess and misguided ambitions.
The book begins at the Puma Club in Florida--a strip club of sorts. Girls dance for men, who pay in tips, who request private time and personal service. Each request comes with high price. April, one of the club's regular performers, is unable to find a babysitter for her three-year-old daughter, Franny. Thus, April has no choice but to bring the toddler with her to the club. There, one of the employees agrees to watch the little girl. Over the course of the night, the club becomes busy, and the babysitter takes off and leaves the girl all alone. Of course, April is too busy with her customers to go and check on the girl either. In fact, one customer, a Middle Eastern man, fixates on April all evening and keeps stuffing more and more hundred dollar bills into her outfit. He asks if he can rub the scar on her abdomen--a cesarian scar that occurred during the birth of her daughter. The man rubs the scar and asks questions about her daughter. When April answers, he stuffs more hundred dollar bills into her bikini.
When Lonnie, one of the club's bouncers, finds the little girl all alone and crying, he feels really sorry for her. He decides to pick her up and give her a ride in his truck. and buy her a Slush Puppy; however, he never makes it back to the Puma Club, and he's stuck with the girl overnight.
When the Puma Club closes, April realizes her daughter is missing. The babysitter is gone. No one knows what happened the girl. Thus, the police are called and a frantic search begins.
"The Garden of Last Days" is a mesmerizing and rather complex novel that tells the stories of everyday people in Florida, who live their lives, work hard, try to make a decent living to support themselves and their families, and, in spite of everything, things always go awry. Dubus' characters are well-drawn, yet fallible individuals who evoke empathy in spite of their flaws.
Dubus explores the dark, smarmy side of life, filled with indulgences, self-gratifications, self-importance, excess, and poor decision making. As Bosch warns, there can be consequences to too much self-pleasure.
"The Garden of Last Days" is a long, dark, and well-crafted book (533 pages). Even so, I found each page absolutely fascinating. It's perhaps the best book I've read this year.
May 7, 2009
I loved The House of Sand and Fog and the way Andre Dubus III (son of the late writer Andre Dubus) built tension among the characters--a young, white, alcoholic woman and a family of Iranian immigrants, both claiming the right to ownership of a house. It was the kind of dramatic novel a modern day Shakespeare would write, where the culminating tragedy had been foretold all along.
Most of the story In the Garden of Last Days plays out at the Puma Club for Men, a strip club in Sarasota, FL. Dubus again pits a young white woman with a questionable lifestyle, against a headstrong foreignor--this time an Islamic Fundamentalist--and throws in some other characters living on the margins, including a wife-beating customer whose fallen in love with a stripper but also longs to reconcile with his wife and son, and a bouncer who would have studied literature if not for his learning disability. Like Anita Shreve's Testimony, this book switches voices throughout, from stripper mom April's rationalization for her line of work, to future 9/11 hijacker Bassam's disgust for Americans, to Jean, April's elderly landlord, who finds joy in caring for April's three-year-old daughter, Franny. All of these lives intersect one late summer night, when April is forced to bring Franny to the club, with disastrous results.
The tension in the beginning of the novel was as good as in House of Sand and Fog. But midway through the book, the story felt like it had reached a climax, and then kind of went nowhere from there. The book could have been a lot shorter--there's a lot of repetition in Bassam's hate-fueled rants and there are subplots--like the bouncer Lonnie's crush on April, which didn't serve much purpose to the storyline. The end left me feeling, is that it? Is that what I read 500+ pages for?
Andre Dubus III is a gifted writer, but overall I think this novel doesn't live up to the promise he showed with The House of Sand and Fog. I do look forward to reading his new memoir from which I heard him read at the Newburyport Literary Festival last month.
Most of the story In the Garden of Last Days plays out at the Puma Club for Men, a strip club in Sarasota, FL. Dubus again pits a young white woman with a questionable lifestyle, against a headstrong foreignor--this time an Islamic Fundamentalist--and throws in some other characters living on the margins, including a wife-beating customer whose fallen in love with a stripper but also longs to reconcile with his wife and son, and a bouncer who would have studied literature if not for his learning disability. Like Anita Shreve's Testimony, this book switches voices throughout, from stripper mom April's rationalization for her line of work, to future 9/11 hijacker Bassam's disgust for Americans, to Jean, April's elderly landlord, who finds joy in caring for April's three-year-old daughter, Franny. All of these lives intersect one late summer night, when April is forced to bring Franny to the club, with disastrous results.
The tension in the beginning of the novel was as good as in House of Sand and Fog. But midway through the book, the story felt like it had reached a climax, and then kind of went nowhere from there. The book could have been a lot shorter--there's a lot of repetition in Bassam's hate-fueled rants and there are subplots--like the bouncer Lonnie's crush on April, which didn't serve much purpose to the storyline. The end left me feeling, is that it? Is that what I read 500+ pages for?
Andre Dubus III is a gifted writer, but overall I think this novel doesn't live up to the promise he showed with The House of Sand and Fog. I do look forward to reading his new memoir from which I heard him read at the Newburyport Literary Festival last month.
July 7, 2008
I hadn't read this author before and when I was browsing some comments on this book on Amazon, it looked like most people enjoyed this but consider The House of Sand and Fog a better book. I first heard of this after Stephen King's glowing review in EW. It's an engrossing story about an exotic dancer named April who brings her 3-year-old daughter Franny to work one night when her regular babysitter is hospitalized. April had no other backup babysitters (I know how that feels). Two of the other main characters are patrons of the Puma club where April works. One is a Muslim man named Bassam, the other is a down-on-his-luck construction worker named AJ. The tension mounts because you just know something bad is going to happen but you're not sure exactly what and then when it does, you've no idea how it'll play out. I read this book very quickly. It is perhaps a bit longer than it needs to be -- sometimes there's just too much description that doesn't really seem necessary. The two main male characters seem to be more fleshed out than April. But that said, it was a good story. I may check out a reading that the author will be giving later this month at a local bookstore. Maybe I'll get my book signed.
February 18, 2009
Claims that by odd twists of fate the paths of 3 people are brought together around 9-11...not necessarily...they all just go to the same strip club. Eventually events surrounding 9-11 begin to appear, but its well into the last third of the book. Disappointing because it continues to receive decent reviews, but I'm convinced that all the critics are men who were enthralled by the graphic nature and ridiculously detailed descriptions of the strippers and their interactions. If you're looking for some soft core entertainment, this book might be for you, but you'd have to be willing to overlook all the flaws in the plot, and the contradicting development of each character - my favorite part is when one of the characters is going on and on about how his wife is a great mother and wife, and two chapters later, decides she's a poor wife. One chapter after that, he goes on about how he should have taken their son away from her because she's incapable of caring for her offspring.....hmmm. I'd like to attribute it to the main character's inner struggle, but I don't give Dubus that much credit. I'm annoyed that I can't get the time I wasted on this one back. Save yourself.
May 3, 2009
"The Garden of Last Days" takes place within the final few days leading up to 9/11. The story follows a small cast of characters whose lives become interconnected during one long night in a strip club. Dubus delves into every thought, feeling, and action of each of these characters, superbly drawing the reader into an understanding of what motivates the choices made by these individuals. We certainly may not always condone these choices, but we do understand them. As the story unfolds, you truly get the sense that each character WANTS to do the right thing, but feels unable due to circumstance.
This book is a long one, but the short chapters help to maintain interest. Stick with it, and you'll be glad you did.
*NOTES*
-The hard-cover edition is actually 535 pages, rather than the 384 listed above.
-I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 only because of the length. I'm sure it could have been shortened just a bit while still maintaining the same effect.
This book is a long one, but the short chapters help to maintain interest. Stick with it, and you'll be glad you did.
*NOTES*
-The hard-cover edition is actually 535 pages, rather than the 384 listed above.
-I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 only because of the length. I'm sure it could have been shortened just a bit while still maintaining the same effect.
February 23, 2012
If I had just one wish for this novel, it would be that Dubus had decided to remove the actual September 11 connection from this book. The story is very strong and so are the characters. It is extremely moving, but the September 11 connection gets in the way. It's like trying to have angry gorillas do ballet. It isn't that Dubus can't handle it, but it is just too charged. It distracts from the beauty of the novel. I know that this is where the germ of inspiration sprouted, but I wish he had changed the September 11 hijackers into less well known terrorists. I just couldn't concentrate on the people and their stories because of the highly charged material that only occasionally showed up, and certainly wasn't the focus. Of course, as time moves on this will not be a problem. It won't be quite as charged and the beauty of the novel will more easily be seen.
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