The Garden of Last Days: A Novel

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
From the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection House of Sand and Fog—a new big-hearted, painful, page-turning novel.

One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work. April's usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works.

Except that April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely.

From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate, page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth, and realism that characterized Andre Dubus's #1 bestseller, House of Sand and Fog—and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

Customer Reviews: Read 78 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

"A little luck like this felt like bait for bigger luck." June 2, 2008
74 out of 87 found this review helpful

While House of Sand and Fog addressed the heartbreaking dilemma of a proud Iranian immigrant faced with the intractable demands of a young woman and a bureaucratic blunder with tragic consequences pre-9/11, The Garden of Last Days tumbles into a much darker landscape on the eve of America's loss of innocence. The internal drama is played out on the tawdry runway of a Florida Gulf Coast strip club, the Puma Club for Men, where April is forced to break her own strict rule, taking her three-year-old daughter, Franny, to work rather than miss an opportunity to salt away more money toward a future free of the decadent circumstances in which she now makes her living. April is a bit of an anomaly, with a well-thought out plan for escaping the downward spiral of such employment, most of the other dancers fortifying themselves with drugs and the occasional extra date with customers after the club closes. But April is thrown off the usual rhythm of her bifurcated life, the dayworld/nightworld of April/Spring when her landlady goes to the hospital unexpectedly with an anxiety attack.

Deeply troubled by this merging of two worlds, April has every reason to doubt the wisdom of her decision as the shift grinds on. Tina, who agrees to keep an eye on Franny while April dances is at best lackadaisical about Franny's care in a cramped office just off the women's dressing room, Tina easily distracted by the demands of her boss. Tiny Franny, in her pink pajamas, is by turns enthralled by her Disney movies and snacks, but needing constant reassurance that her mother will soon take her home. The following hours are filled with a heart-stopping chain of events portending disaster, the incessant beat of the DJ's selections as each stripper takes to the stage, the drunken shouts of customers paying for a show, the exchange of money for services, all under the guise of a good time. April is watched: by Louis, her lascivious boss; by Lonnie, a bouncer who views "Spring" as different from the others; by Bassam, a chain-smoking, intense young man from Saudi Arabia who walks straight into the embrace of evil, unable to resist the seduction of this foreign country's blatant disregard for modesty. On the cusp of a great personal sacrifice, Bassam covets April's attention in the private Champagne Room, willing to pay handsomely for his moral digression.

Fleshed out by the disaffection of a loud-mouthed customer, AJ, who is thrown out of the club for unacceptable behavior, a terrible chain of events is set in motion, AJ desperate to reclaim wife and son, a victim of his own excesses and a fixation on a wide-eyed dancer whose only interest is in his wallet. As AJ's transgressions pile up in contrast to his best intentions, pinballing over the wreckage of his past actions, Bassam focuses on April/Spring, alternately judging and lecturing while April cannot keep her eyes from the hundreds of dollars that will bring her dream that much closer. As the hours pass, a diverse cast divulges their secrets, the individual histories that have led to this fateful night on the Gulf Coast, the shattered dreams, the misspent promise of youth, lives sidetracked by necessity and bad choices, at the heart of it the slightly ranting of a fanatical Bassam, seduced by the imperfections of the flesh while embracing the distortions of his extremist education.

April otherwise engaged, a little girl awakens, alone and afraid, crying for her mother; a drunk, angry man notices, blundering through his own vague yearnings. And once more, through the minutiae of random struggles, a greater tragedy evolves. Certainly Dubus is a master of the unexpected confluence of events begun through the collision of human frailty and false pride, an impending cultural cataclysm that erases America's innocence. Based on fact, this novel's exploration of the seedy underbelly of modern culture is both intense and broad, Dubus once more shaking a distracted psyche and reminding us to pay attention. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

5 out of 5 stars

This is Genius May 28, 2008
54 out of 71 found this review helpful

This year has been one for books in my opinion. James Frey's new novel--which I really didn't expect to be all that good--blows up on the page as this wide scoped brilliant collage of Los Angeles life. Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone (mild and tempered book of a young girl coming of age after suffering an assault and becoming obese) and the brilliant and genuine piece of commercial literature I Know This Much Is True has his new novel announced for November. And this novel, from the author that brought us Bluesman and House of Sand and Fog brings us a book that is as important in the caliber of literature as it is important to every American life. This powerful novel adresses such things as sex and social need and it pulls us into the world of September 11th 2001 and into the mind and heart of a terrorist.

The writing is both raw and exuberant. The language is both tense and rhapsodical. This is a novel that can entertain the non-reader and please the literary eye. It invokes itself into well described and well researched worlds and creates them in front of your eyes. You become April's anxiety as she takes her daughter to her place of work when her babysitter says she can't come. You are drawn into the sadness and distance of some of the patrons and the haughtyness and the rambunctiousness of some of the others. The old woman, Jean, is beautifully described as a woman whose heart may be so big that it might be killing her... she was the babysitter... or was supposed to be but she had to go to the hospital. There's the child described with so much innocence that you can see her come to life as her mother tries to rub the grape ring from a slush aroun her mouth with a moist wipe. You can see her arms and her petulant and tired nature, and that is merely the opening pages.

This book is destined to be considered great. I wouldn't doubt if it took the national book award this time. You need not any hesitancy in this purchase, no falling asleep here, it is asbolutely captivating. To go through it all in a small summary, you have a stripper who takes her kid to work, her job is just a job to her and she finds herself angry and despondent to the world, she works at the puma club. Jean is the old woman that rents an apartment to April--the stripper--and she has to go to the hospital with heart pain, AJ is a somber and respective man with a distinct and inate nature of talking to April while looking at her face instead of her eyes, and the terrorist like I said is heartfelt. Buy it. You'll love it. You're life will be enthralled as you start reading it.

1 out of 5 stars

major disappointment June 5, 2008
50 out of 74 found this review helpful

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.

The pace of the book was slooooow, as though immersed in quicksand. Dubus belabored so many points that I wondered if he even read the manuscript after he finished it. I grew so sick of hearing about April's guilt and AJ's perceived "victimization". Enough, already. The boring paths which Dubus meanders along make the forward action of the novel come to a grinding halt. No momentum.

But the reviewers loooooove it. And they thought Bassam was well-developed. HUH? Did they read the same book as I did? He was so underdeveloped that removing him from the book would not have made any difference at all. He and his story were totally unnecessary to the plot, what there was of 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.

I went to my local bookstore 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? I was seriously hoping that the final published version had indeed been edited and reduced from its previous ponderous size. Alas, this was not the case.

What a shame this was not up to the high standards, in every way, of "House of Sand and Fog". Too bad.

1 out of 5 stars

A complete and utter failure. June 10, 2008
13 out of 25 found this review helpful

Heard all the hype of this book...Stephen King saying it is the best thing he's read in a while...loved the movie of HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG...still have the book and will try it out someday...but this??
Does he have an editor? The endless back stories of each and every character....the monotonous plot...slow pacing, characters that no one can root for...more importantly, even care for.
Total waste of time...skimmed the last 350 pages.
A complete an utter failure.

1 out of 5 stars

Not good June 9, 2008
11 out of 17 found this review helpful

I loved "House of Sand and Fog" so bought this book when it first came out. I gave up around page 300. Started skimming ahead and then realized that I really didn't care how it ended anyway. I found it very boring and repetitive--annoyingly so. I got it--A.J.'s wrist hurt. Don't waste your time.

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