The Garden of Last Days: A Novel

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Customer Reviews:

couldn't put it down but got bored with the Muslim characters [Posted on 2008-11-03]
This is a 500+ page book but I just couldn't put it down. Finished it in a day. I liked this so much better than House of Sand & Fog. I did get bored with the Muslim characters (hence the 4 stars) but the other story lines were compelling. The various story lines aren't tied up as neatly as I'd like at the end, but it was a fun ride while it lasted. I'd recommend this book.

Worthy follow-up, didn't let me down [Posted on 2008-11-10]
I loved House of Sand & Fog and was so excited when I learned that this author was coming out with a new novel. I think this was a worthy follow-up, I was not disappointed. All 500+ pages I was on the edge of my seat.

The novel actually only takes place over only a couple of days, but even at 530 some pages, you aren't bored. The pace is fast enough, yet detailed enough. The characters are each fascenating in their own right. You're taken nearly hour by hour with what each character is thinking/feeling/doing. You hate some, but are engrossed. Others you feel sorry for. Some you may relate to or you may not, but either way you are hoping for a positive outcome for this little girl to get home to her mother. This novel and it's story and characters are so in-depth, I can't even begin to tell you. Just read it!

A novel you won't soon forget!

Disappointing [Posted on 2008-11-12]
I was looking forward to reading this book since I thoroughly enjoyed "House of Sand and Fog", but was very disappointed. It's just another "day in the life"-type novel with no point. If you're in the mood for that type of book, it's OK and is fast reading, but if you want something with a little more substance, keep looking.

The road to nowhere [Posted on 2008-11-19]
The House of Sand and Fog drew in more readers than this work would ever have garnered on its own. I read 115 pages before coming to these reviews. I wanted to have some assurance that it wasn't just me. The book just doesn't go anywhere. I'm enough of a degenerate to stay in the strippers lounge all day on my own; but I wanted out from the scenes in this book. Thanks to the brave readers who posted here, and saved me from further self inflicted distress.

The Garden of Last Days: Why Myth? [Posted on 2008-11-22]
It has bee said there are no new stories; we repeat the same stories; and they come from mythical narrations passed from generation to generation. Andre Dubus repeats the familiar Garden of Eden myth in his novel Garden of Last Days. When he links complex contemporary characters to the myth we know he intends to ponder universal questions. What is the nature of man; does he have free will; and what is his purpose?

Eden is an enclosed garden with two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of immortality, the landscape of the soul. Configuring the novel with myth puts Dubus in company with Joseph Campbell who uses myth to find spiritual meaning in a postmodern world, which is exactly what Dubus attempts.

He sets his novel in the tropical landscape of Florida. He contrasts elements of the tree of knowledge of good and evil by describing Jean's lovely garden and the sleazy Puma Club. Behind Jean's enclosed garden is innocent goodness, full of light--the perfect setting for April's three year old daughter Franny. The Puma Club, a strip joint, is another enclosed garden, but it is dark, a setting for degradation where women commodify themselves selling sexuality, and lonely men numb themselves with drugs and booze in a misguided effort to make a human connection.

Although April spends her nights entertaining in this garden of lost innocence, she lives in both gardens and is the tie to all the characters in the story. Once Dubus introduces the characters he constructs a plot that moves the narrative to a fatalistic conclusion. Do the characters have free will or are their lives predictable? The reader knows early in the story where the plot is going. Does Dubus think the players have any choice about their fate?

He cares deeply about all of them. He details them in small increments. First he portrays stereotypes: April, single mother, exotic dancer; Jean, elderly lonely widow; AJ, divorced father and alcoholic; and Bassam, Muslim fundamentalist terrorist. Each time Dubus returns to detail a character he gives more facets--flashbacks revealing childhood, motivations, and human vulnerabilities. One of Dubus' interests is how the role of mother affects each character. He spells out April's interactions with her mother, AJ's, Bassam's; and the influence these mothers had on their children. Dubus presents April as mother to Franny; he presents Jean, childless, but also a mother the Franny. AJ, though male, is a nurturing mother-figure, better than his wife Deena, to his own son and to Franny. Dubus struggles with these imperfect mothers, who come up short cherishing their own children, imprinting them with weakness.

A sensitive observer, a genius at detail, Dubus does not accept a one dimensional stereotype. His characters contradict themselves: evil ones are sometimes kind; kind ones show a dark side. Just when the reader is ready to condemn a character Dubus slips in a vulnerable fact and the reader starts to care. Bassam, a terrorist with a warped perspective, becomes human when Dubus inserts an incident from childhood that lets the reader know how insecure Bassam is, how conflicted he was in relationship to his father. Despicable AJ drives drunk with Franny in his truck, but when the reader sees his sincere concern for the child, AJ is no longer simply an old drunk. The reader has empathy for the characters because Dubus cares about each of them.

What's to become of these fictional characters? What do they tell us about Dubus' view of the world in the garden of last days? Last Days? What becomes of the characters after they die?
Joseph Campbell says myth is shaped by recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology. He says the second impulse is that the social group that nourishes man existed before him and will survive him. And finally Campbell says that man, aware of his landscape, relates himself to the universe, not as the center of the universe but as a part. Is this the way Dubus sees the world? We all live in the garden of last days. We are all interrelated. We have choices and we impact each other.

What is Dubus' answer to the universal questions: what is the nature of man; does he have free will; and what is his purpose? Dubus seems to believe in fate, but he also believes in social interaction. He clearly sees evil and innocence as part of the human condition. Does he believe we really have free will? His novel asks questions but leaves many questions unanswered. Myth may be the only way to get to the essence of the human condition.

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