The Garden of Last Days: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ Andre Dubus III (Author)
Key Phrases: hurricaneproof house, kafir woman, floor hosts, Dolphins Cap, Lido Key, Little Andy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dubus's ambitious if uneven follow-up to House of Sand and Fog begins shortly before 9/11 with stripper April taking her three-year-old daughter, Franny, to work after the babysitter flakes at the last minute. Though she leaves Franny with the club's house mother and intends to keep tabs on her, April's distracted on the floor by Bassam, a Muslim who's in Florida to take flying lessons and (like one of the real 9/11 hijackers) spends early September 2001 throwing around money and living lasciviously. Meanwhile, AJ, a down-on-his-luck local, lingers in the parking lot after getting thrown out for touching a dancer. The slow-starting plot splinters once Franny wanders outside and disappears. Soon, AJ's wanted for kidnapping, April's run through the social service wringers as an unfit parent, and the murky particulars of Bassam's mission come into sharp focus as he struggles with his religious convictions. Dubus gives the breath of life to most of his characters (Bassam—not so much), though the narrative has a mechanical feeling, partially owing to the narrow emotional register Dubus works in: doom and desperation are in plentiful supply from page one, and as the novel fades to black, the reader's left with a roster of sadder-but-wiser Americans to contemplate. (June)
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From The New Yorker

Dubus’s follow-up to "House of Sand and Fog" is inspired by the rumored visit of 9/11 hijackers to a strip club shortly before their attacks. In the fictional Puma Club, in Sarasota, Florida, a twenty-six-year-old named Bassam al-Jizani watches Spring, a stripper, undress, and finds his "hatred for these kufar rising with the knowledge of his own weakness." We know he is entranced, because he does not imagine slitting her throat, as he does with most people he encounters. Bassam recoils from the hedonistic pursuits of the West, yet finds himself drawn to them; losing his virginity to a prostitute, he wonders, "How many years will she be given by the Creator before she will burn?" Imagining the mind of a terrorist, Dubus runs into a familiar problem: Bassam’s thoughts are a case study in the banality of evil. "Hatred gives him strength," he writes. But it doesn’t make him interesting.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (May 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393041654
• ISBN-13: 978-0393041651
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (109 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #189,093 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A little luck like this felt like bait for bigger luck.", June 2, 2008

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Expected more, July 14, 2008

By	Jaronimo (NJ, the garden state) - See all my reviews

I bought this book solely based on Stephen King's review in EW, so needless to say, I was expecting a lot. Most of the book takes place over the course of one night at a strip club in Florida. It is essentially based on a bad choice made by April, the stripper, taking her child to work with her instead of staying home and missing a night of tips. It follows the characters as they are connected to April and her daughter and drags on endlessly over every last detail. I felt the book was overly lengthy and about 2/3 into it I skimmed the chapters about Bassam, the 9/11 terrorist. It just became too much background info and not enough story. I just kept plodding along expecting something else to happen...waiting for 9/11 and how all these characters I had invested 400 pages in would react to the tragedy and actually being a small part in the last days of one of the terrorists. I was, however, let down. When the book finally reached 9/11 it was utterly anti-climatic, it just wound down and ultimately ended with no major revelations or surprise, I suppose that was the point.

Shelly

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bloated Behemoth Needs Editing., July 16, 2008

By	XTRMNTR (Omaha, NE) - See all my reviews

This is one of those books that makes your heart sink as you read it, not because of the leaden subject matter but because of the heavy hand with which it was written and the occasional flashes of brilliance buried between endless pages of absolute nothingness.

Having enjoyed Dubus' previous novel, "House of Sand and Fog" a great deal, I plunged into "The Garden of Last Days" eagerly, and just kept waiting for something, anything in this book to stick. I was left, mostly, with just the character of Jean, who is given short shrift and belongs in another, better book.

Had this book been able to condense what is essentially a character study covering only a few short days into something less than 550 pages (say something along the lines of the length of "House of Sand and Fog," for example) then maybe it would be worth the time spent on it. Still, a disappointment, but at least a worthy, three-star read. As it is, I found this book bloated, overwritten on every count, offensive and vaguely racist. There. I said it. I think Dubus' handling of the Bassam character was confused and stereotypical. Having read this after having read other, more successful dips into post-9/11 lit (Claire Messud's "Emperor's Children", Don DeLillo's "Falling Man"), it just seems slick and preachy, yet unsure of what it's trying to say. Moreover, the novel has undertones of misogyny that are unappealing, and a hasty tendency to paint things in harsh tones of black or white when it's so very, very obvious that Dubus himself thinks he's dabbling only in literary and moral gray-areas.

I did not like this book and I can not recommend it.

As a post-script, I must mention that there is a severe need in the literary world for EDITING. So many books are released these days with hundreds of spare, unnecessary pages that diminish the impact of the final product. This novel and James Frey's latest, "Bright Shiny Morning" (which is still a good read) being the two most obvious recent examples. Authors like Ian McEwan can get across entire lifetimes in under 200 pages...why is it so hard for these guys? The talent is obviously there, but an editor is sorely missed.