Toad Hall Bookstore

The Garden of Last Days By Andre Dubus III

W.W. Norton & Co., New York, June 2008

$24.95, hardcover, 535 pages

‘Garden of Last Days’ digs deep

Review By Rae Francoeur

"The Garden of Last Days" is an elegant read whose tone —
low and sonorous and hypnotic — drills in and won’t let go.

This novel follows Dubus’ acclaimed “House of Sand and Fog,”
a National Book Award finalist. Dubus, who lives on the North Shore, appeared
on Oprah’s book club after the publication of
“House of Sand and Fog.” Oprah loved the book but many readers were
riled by the tragic ending and despondent characters.

Tragedy and sadness are at the core of this new book, too,
though parts of this tragedy are well known to all. Other parts are largely
imagined, in this case by Dubus, who wants to know something about how and why.

Dubus sets “The Garden of Last Days” in Florida a few days
before Sept. 11. His main characters, a troupe of beleaguered misfits, grow
increasingly desperate as Sept. 11 nears. Events foment at the Puma Club for
Men, where April, a young mother, is a stripper who winds up privately
entertaining Bassam, a young Muslim with a lot of cash and a confounding
obsession with women. He’s tortured by his physical drives, including lust and
appetite for food, and tormented by his inability to purify himself for his
ultimate role on Sept. 11.

Bassam and the Puma Club are at the vortex of the action,
with everyone else responding rather than intervening as events spiral down.
Dubus gives every character opportunities to alter ill fate but their actions
honor their circumstances and their histories, at least at first. The only
character that behaves uncharacteristically, though not surprisingly, is
Bassam, who finally defies his appetites and steps onboard an American Airlines
flight to Los Angeles on Sept. 11.

The most misguided of the characters, besides Bassam, is
hapless A.J. He’s already under a restraining order for hitting his wife. A
bouncer at the Puma Club breaks his arm when A.J. takes hold of a stripper’s
hand and squeezes because he thinks he’s in love with her. Things go from bad
to worse when A.J. drives away with April’s little girl, who shouldn’t have
been at the club in the first place.

Everyone in the United States experienced change after Sept.
11. People turned toward friends and family. They limited the sphere of their
activities and reset priorities. On a smaller scale, the same thing happens in
“The Garden of Last Days.” Priorities get acknowledged and honored, not so much
because of Sept. 11, but because of the foment Bassam stirs. Characters in this
book plunge headfirst, but catch themselves.

Dubus’ talent here is the way he details his characters’
points of view. We don’t just see the world through their eyes, we feel the
world as they do. At first, we experience long droning in-the-moment sentences
and wonder why we’d choose to be in someone like April’s head. We worry we’ll
be drowned in minutia but the morass quickly reforms. We’re fording a
consciousness, rife with observation, impressions, motivations. Each character
is a tone poem, resonating at a certain pitch. The scene in which a strip club
owner rapes April is nearly unendurable in its impact even though it is felt
through eyes clouded by a date rape drug and envisioned almost entirely
metaphorically. “The Garden of Last Days” isn’t a page turner like “House of
Sand and Fog” but it’s every bit as addictive in its capture and transformation
of the reader.

Andre Dubus III will appear at the Rockport Public Library
on Thursday, August 28, to conclude the summer’s Beach Reads program and to
talk about his book. You may view a video clip of Dubus discussing his book at http://www.blip.tv/file/851251 .

Rae Francoeur is a
writer and editor. She can be reached at rae.francoeur@verizon.net. This
review was first published in The Beacon.