The Garden of Last Days

By Gary Williams, Special to the Rocky

Published June 19, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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* Fiction. By Andre Dubus. Norton, $24.95. Grade: C

Plot in a nutshell: As a backdrop for his much-anticipated new novel, the author of the acclaimed House of Sand and Fog uses known facts of the actions of the Sept. 11 terrorists in the days leading up to the attacks.

On the Thursday night before the attack, April, a stripper in Florida, brings her 3-year-old daughter to work with her when the babysitter is unavailable. The same night, A.J., a strip club regular whose home life is a wreck, gets evicted from the club, while a foreign customer becomes eerily attracted to April. These three lives collide and are explored by Dubus over an excruciating weekend.

Sample of prose: Dubus writes of April as a bad night at work continues to unravel: "She felt now how empty her hands were, the money - where was it? Where did she put it? But it was like worrying about your coffee spilling as your car rolls over down the highway."

Pros: Dubus' storytelling instincts are true. He captures the Southern working-class plight of his characters with sincerity and enough compassion to keep the reader interested as the weekend unwinds.

Cons: The story is not fast-paced and is sometimes achingly slow. Dubus will belabor an idea to a point that borders on insult to the reader. We know April feels bad for bringing her daughter to the Puma Club strip joint. We know that A.J. perceives himself as a victim in his messy family life. But these are just two of the points of which Dubus relentlessly reminds the reader.

Final word: The story premise is intriguing and rife with possibility. However, Dubus never establishes credibility in the character of Bassam, the terrorist-to-be, in the same way he seems comfortable with the other downtrodden Southerners. The Garden of Last Days would have been helped tremendously by better pacing and sharper editing.

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