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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780393041651 ISBN: 0393041654 Label: W. W. Norton Manufacturer: W. W. Norton Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: June 02, 2008 Publisher: W. W. Norton Studio: W. W. Norton Editorial Review: Product Description: From the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection House of Sand and Fog—a new big-hearted, painful, page-turning novel. One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work. April's usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works. Except that April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite 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 and honor 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 characterized Andre Dubus's #1 bestseller, House of Sand and Fog—and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Purchase ReviewBook arrived promptly. Most importantly the book was in way better condition than described. I had to look for the tear that seller said the dust jacket had. Would certainly buy from this seller again. Rating:  - The need for patience and reading between the lines ...Undeserving, I think, of much of the harsh criticism I've been reading up to this point. The character development and three-dimensionality of the book's major characters is key to the story. April, AJ and Bassam are all seriously flawed and have questionable motives and goals. Are they good people or bad? Have they made good choices or questionable ones? Are they lying to themselves about their true motives? Are they hypocrites? I think the real point here is the ability to see ... Read More Rating:  - Can't understand this book being on Top of 2008 listsWhy is this book on so many national and regional Best of 2008 lists? It professes to be a preface of our 9/11 world, with one of the hijackers being a character visiting the strip club that is the center of the novel, but to me the story just didn't really deliver on it's promises. Better editing could have reined this book in a bit as I felt as if there were constant repetition of action and thought processes. There were many times I just wanted to scream, "Get on with it." And then once it did it ... Read More Rating: - Loved it.Andre Dubus's perspective on the characters inside the 9/11 plot is phenomenal. I loved this book. You are rooting for the characters, and begging them "don't do it!" all at the same time. Very well written, and keeps you engaged with every page. Rating: - Prune The Garden to Improve the StoryThe story of a mishmash of people coming together is interesting; but, like other reviewers have commented, it would have been improved by deleting chunks of repetitive prose. That said, by building on a cast of spiritually broken characters, whose only link to innocence is a three-year- old, the writer depicts how each heads toward disaster. Their own personal disasters and one shared by us all. While it was hard for this reader to recognize or relate to the people in the story, Dubose puts a realistically ... Read More |
