The Garden of Last Days: A Novel | Andre Dubus III

The Garden of Last Days: A Novel | Andre Dubus III | Hard to Grasp

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The Garden of Last...

	The Garden of Last Days: A Novel Andre Dubus III W. W. Norton, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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From the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection House of Sand and Fog?a new big-hearted, painful, page-turning novel.

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

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

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

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Fantastic Read!

Like so much of Dubus' writing, the pull between the choices characters make and the circumstances they let happen to them dance to a volatile tune of fightening possiblities. The book reads quickly depsite it's size and the pace of events pulls you through the story -- I had trouble putting it down! The details of events and range of characters makes for a rich and compelling story. I highly recommend this book!!!

Hard to Grasp

I disliked the first 150 pages of this book. Almost unreadable. Then it got better. I couldn't put it down. I am not a fan of his writing style in this book. I had to go back and re-read paragraphs just to get the jist of what he was trying to communicate and even then sometimes I was clueless. He does capture the very essence of life as an exotic dancer and a few other of the characters. I will not recommend it as heartily as I did his first book.

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