The Garden of Last Days

Oct 7, 2024 3:24 AM

Author:Andre Dubus III

One early September night, at the moment before the world changes, a young woman brings her daughter to work.

April's usual babysitter, Jean, has had a panic attack that's landed her in hospital. April doesn't really know anyone else, so decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works.

But April is a stripper at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favourite 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, honour 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 characterised Andre Dubus's bestselling House of Sand and Fog - and with an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

Reviews

The best book I read this winter...This book is so good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it...Dubus casts a net of dread over the reader so strong that one sometimes longs to put it down, but finds himself unable... you want to grab someone and tell them to read it - don't wait for the movie, read it now.

—— Stephen King

'More than cements Dubus' status as one of America's finest writers... Tension and confusion are wrought from every spare yet evocative sentence.

—— Irvine Welsh

'You cannot help but be mesmerised'

—— Sunday Times

Explosive... profound...masterful...Difficult to put down, impossible to forget.

—— Kirkus (starred review)

Riveting and disturbing.

—— Esquire

Reading Reichs is always an education one way or another. There is plenty of action... but it is the detail that actually makes it gripping

—— Evening Standard

Brennan is a winner, and so is Reichs

—— Daily News

A truly impressive writer

—— We Love This Book

Alex Cross is a legend.

—— HARLAN COBEN

Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It's what fires off the movie projector in the reader's mind.

—— MICHAEL CONNELLY

Patterson knows where our deepest fears are Patterson knows where our deepest fears are buried... there's no stopping his imagination.buried... there's no stopping his imagination.

—— NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Patterson is in a class by himself.

—— VANITY FAIR

Sharp, sassy and guaranteed to send shivers down your spine, this is a tense thriller

—— WOMAN

Cross is one of the best and most likeable characters in the modern thriller.

—— SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

I love Kate's writing...a fantastic detective mystery

—— Mirror

The opening chapter of Kate Atkinson's latest book is one of the finest pieces of suspense literature you will read this year . . . addictive . . . Atkinson is back at her best

—— London Life

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