The Garden of Last Days: A Novel

Dubus III, Andre

ISBN 10: 1455809187 ISBN 13: 9781455809189

Publisher: Brilliance Audio, 2011

Synopsis

April’s usual babysitter, Jean, has had a panic attack that has landed her in the hospital. April doesn’t really know anyone else, 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. 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 listener by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth, and realism that characterized Andre Dubus’s bestselling House of Sand and Fog – and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

About this title

About the Author:

Andre Dubus III is the author of House of Sand and Fog (an Oprah’s Book Club selection and finalist for the National Book Award), Bluesman, and The Cage Keeper and Other Stories. He lives with his family north of Boston.

From AudioFile:

Dan John Miller is one of those narrators willing to stay in the background and allow the storyteller to take the spotlight. That is not a criticism, only an observation of his technique here. It's hard to argue with Miller's choice in the case of this novel, which rotates among a cast of characters, each seemingly doomed in some way. Most of the action takes place in a Florida strip club, where one of the main characters, a dancer named Spring, works. The other characters are a resentful, estranged husband, who will make a disastrous mistake, and a Saudi, who two days later will participate in the attacks of 9/11. Miller capably handles the accents during the occasional dialogue but is otherwise an understated performer. M.O. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1455809187
• ISBN 13: 9781455809189
• Binding: Audio CD