The garden of last days : a novel / by Andre Dubus III

New York : W. W. Norton, 2008. First Edition. Hardcover. One early September night, at the moment before the world changes, a young woman brings her daughter to work. Aprils 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 childrens 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 hes 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 Dubuss bestselling House of Sand and Fog and with an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart. An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw, now mylar-sleeved. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new. ; 537 pages; Description: 537 p. ; 25 cm. Subjects: Stripteasers --Mothers and daughters --Fiction