Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Garden of Last Days - by Andre Dubus

Finally, a book I could not put down. Took about four days to read, because I can not read on week-ends when my husband is around, as he does not like me to be distracted from him (hahaha) (sad but true, he once told me he thinks it is insulting for me to ignor him by reading. If we are watching tv and I am uninterested in the show and try to read, he begins to talk - about the tv show - so I give up).

I digress.

I had read 150 pages before I could pull myself away. The story was about a woman who worked in a strip club because she was obsessed with making enough money to buy real estate, not one house, but many. She has a three year old daughter who is taken care of by her landlady while Mom strips. Land lady has a major panic attack and lands in hospital. Does Mom call in sick? Of course not, what type of book would this be if she did? No, she takes kid to the strip club with her and has the "house Mom" watch over the kid.

Does House Mom watch over kid? Hell no, this is a strip club!

As disgusting a plot as this is, I could not stop reading. Once again, a cast of characters that begin interesting and then wear on me. The guy AJ who takes the child, whom he found wandering in the back lot at the restaurant entrance, dumpster etc. AJ with the broken wrist, broken by the bouncer b/c he was touching, holding hands with one of the "girls" thinking "this one is different"...

The real kicker was the Egyptians who took up 1/4 of the book. When I had figured out (which i did about 50 pages in) that these three guys were some the hijackers from 911, I began to skip the pages devoted to them.

Lot of inconsequential characters whoes lives and memories I could care less about. I imagine it was to give us some feeling, some understanding of the complications of their lives, motivations....

The book was 535 pages, I skipped about 100 of them...could have been 300 pages and still a good book.

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