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Loading... The Garden of Last Days: A Novelby Andre Dubus III
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. One night in late summer 2001 told through the eyes of stripper (April), AJ (a patron who was ejected from the strip club), one of the 9/11 terrorists, Asam and Jean, April's landlady and babysitter, who was admitted to the hospital forcing April to bring her 3 year old to work with her. The child is unattended and crying at the back door of the club when AJ sees her and takes her, thinking he is saving her. April entertains Assam, clinching her connection to 9/11. Pretty well written but too long for what was needed and clearly not up to the level of "House of Sand and Fog." (  )brenzi | Apr 9, 2009 |   This book wasn't as good as "House of Sand And Fog" in my opinion but it kept you interested.....just wasn't a page turner. (  )txwildflower | Mar 31, 2009 | Considering the other reviews from fans of House of Sand & Fog, it appears the consensus here is that Dubus has produced a C effort at best, and disappointed most of us who enjoyed the A-game evident in his debut novel. Sand & Fog presented us with the moral dilemmas and disastrously bad judgments made by two tragically flawed characters, shifting our empathies for them and anger with them back and forth throughout the narrative. The conclusion was stunning, unexpected, and hauntingly sad. None of these elements are present in Garden of Last Days. After 200 pages, I found no connection to or interest in their lives or the obvious conclusion towards which Dubus is trudging along. There is no dramatic tension in this concept- the last days of a 9/11 terrorist and the lives of those who buzzed around him in their pathetic little routines, working at or partronizing a Florida strip club. It was a mistake to buy this book on blind faith, because it's impossible to finish with so many other fine works on my reading list. dreamreader | Mar 21, 2009 | The strength of this book is also its weakness. The story centers on the days prior to 9-11 and the exploits of one of the soon-to-be infamous hijackers. Bassam is torn between the temptations of the life to be had in this society he detests and that he considers evil, and his devotion to Islam and the great honor that has been bestowed upon him (amongst other things). We see the world through his eyes and it is an enlightening perspective at first. He winds up at a strip club in Florida and there he spends thousands of dollars on a stripper named Spring, drinking and smoking the whole time. His torment is almost unbearable at times, and you learn much about the terminology the jihadist use to refer to non-believers along with the anger toward our infiltration of their holy land and our way of life in general. The perspective starts to wear thin toward the end of the book as the passages in which Bassam confronts his doubts grow longer and more repetitive. There are other major characters and their story lines are engaging and intertwined with Bassam's but you finish the book thinking mostly of him and wonder what use everyone else was. As such, I thought the book dragged on a little long. (  )conehead | Mar 11, 2009 | A book about people sinking down to the point of catharsis. Some recover, some muddle through, some sink even deeper. A sad book, with little hope on display. ( )pwoodford | Jan 29, 2009 | 0.035 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0393041654, Hardcover)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. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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