House of Sand and Fog [Unabridged]

Rating:
Summary: A Great Literary Thriller
Review: House of Sand and Fog is everything a great novel should be; it has great characters, a very intriguing plot, enough twists to keep you busy for 370 pages and tight, beautiful writing that wraps the whole thing up in one neat little package. I've read some people call this one the best American thriller of the last decade. Although I'm not quite sure if it is the best, it sure has its place somewhere at the top.

Kate loses her family home (the one her father built) when she is accused of tax evasion. Only, the tax office has made a mistake and evicts her for no reason. Her house is then sold on the auction market for less than half its value to a foreign family. When the mistake is made known to this new family, the father, a proud ex-colonel who is now hiding in America, refuses to sell the house back even though it rightfully belongs to Kate.

Colonel Behrani is a proud man who is all about appearances. He prefers looking good to others and lives beyond his means. He is proud of this bargain he's had on the house and now plans to sell it for triple the price he paid for the small bungalow. When Kate enters their lives, he automatically shuts down and ignores the poor woman's pleas.

Kathy meets a young officer and starts seeing him. Leslie is quickly drawn into Kate's world and finds himself right in the middle of a brewing emotional storm. This character, who appears to be a quiet, reserved and simple man on the surface is a time bomb waiting to explode.

Needles to say that the payoff of these events will be left engraved in your mind for quite some time. I have to tip my hat to Andre Dubus for having created characters you both hate and like. In the beginning, you find yourself rooting for Kate, but as the story progresses and as the characters sink deeper into their pile of problems, this emotional attachment changes and you end up sympathizing with the Colonel and his family.

This is a literary thriller that would have made Hitchcock proud. Told mostly in the first person, the book tangles very touching and emotional subjects that will affect the characters and readers both. These characters are so pathetic you can't help but feel sorry for them, but they are also very egocentric, to the point where you start hating them for what they do. These are flawed characters that feel so real they almost bleed off the page.

I couldn't put this one down. Once the reader lets go and enters the narrative, he will partake in a trip he won't soon forget, one full of darkness, full of blood, full of betrayal, and full of tears and rage.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing
Review: This book is not everyone's cup of tea, but most certainly a book that makes you loathe and love the characters of Mr.Behrani, Kathy and Lester. I found myself stuck at times with who I felt more pity for or who I thought needed to be smacked. The despair and misery and pride were always pounding at your head on every page. I only hope that the movie retains the dialogue and this feel you get from being enveloped in every character. *Not to be fresh to the person who wrote the review re: the tax issue being stupid and able to be solved straightaway...trust me, the county never works that fast, plus remember, Kathy threw away all notices and so called chances to rectify situation. Maybe you will see the flick and like it better?*

Rating:
Summary: Oprah's Book Club is Great
Review: I want to eventually read all of the books in Oprah's Book Club. Judging by previous reviews people did not like the book at all. I rather enjoyed it. It was simple but the characters were well made. I have never read a book with an Iranian character before and it was a learning experience. The story is a tale about a house wrongfully sold to an Iran man. It's a story of freedom and strong will. There are some turns in this book that I did not expect at all. But I thought it was good enough to recomend to some of my reader friends. Besides, I'll read everything once.

Rating:
Summary: On the whole, annoying and tiring
Review: I must admit that I looked forward to reading some of the early chapters of the book during my lunch hour. After the first third or so, I lost interest. Then I got irritated by the repetition and boring 'tension' that the book introduced and then beat to death. Then at about the 1/2 way point I thought I would stop reading it, but compromised and spent about 5 second on each page, just to feel that I had 'read' it.

The main characters are weak, selfish, pointless. The plot is thin and not very convincing. The writing is boring, and the formula of switching the character point of view from chapter to chapter got tiring (probably because the characters are so).

Sorry for this low rating. I 'm fussy about my books and life is simply too short...

Rating:
Summary: Not for Children
Review: All right, that's it. I don't usually write reviews, but this time (having read many of the reviews posted here), I feel I have a public service to perform. Attention: if you feel a good novel must have lovable characters, a politically correct storyline, lots of dialogue, an "uplifting" ending, and/or a "moral lesson" to convey, please do not read this book. If you force yourself to suffer through it, you will only feel cheated, angry, and confused. For you, I recommend Harry Potter - although perhaps not most recent books in the series, since they do have some rather dark moments.

No, it is not a happy story, and yes, the sex scenes are tawdry, somewhat gross, and depressing (I think that's why so many readers reacted so violently to them - they fly in the face of the conventional belief that sex scenes are supposed to be fun). But the book is finely written, and captures an essential truth: most of us are closer to going off the deep end than we think we are. Sure, the characters are infuriating, obtuse, and ultimately self-destructive - utterly human, in other words. If so many readers found their personalities to be "unrealistic" or "unbelievable," that just goes to prove the point (obvious to the rest of the world) that most Americans have no sense of tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Pointless and manipulative
Review: This is an unbelievable story of one Kathy Nicolo, divorced, recovering alcoholic, who for $500.00 in erroneous back business taxes gets her house sold off at auction, to a former Iranian Military officer trying to live up to the American dream. She fights to get her house back. The colonel tries to weasel her out of three times the sale price. Throw in a "misunderstood" married cop who falls in love with the heroine, sprinkle with laughable descriptions of sex, some kidnapping, killing and that's pretty much it.

In short it stinks. Aside from the almost total lack of believability, it's overly long, the shifting points-of-view are irritating, as in the constant switching of the characters' voices. It all makes this soap opera on paper even more tedious than it already is. I half expected to find Kathy tied to railroad tracks, with Colonel Behrani standing over her, cackling laughter, and wringing his waxed moustache.

I didn't buy any of this story after the first 30 pages or so. Any half-assed, first year, Law student could have had the tax lein removed, and the sale halted in a day with a single court order. On the next day, the county would be sued ten ways from Sunday - everything from negligence, to civil rights violations, defamation of character, to wreckless endengerment, to health and safety violations - not to mention a public relations nightmare that would look like a deleted scene from Clive Barker's "Hellraiser".

Save your money (if you're thinking of buying it), or save your eye sight (if you thinking of borrowing it from the library). Read something else.

Rating:
Summary: No happy ending here.
Review: We all know everyone is supposed to have a "darkside", a personality that lacks the ability to see right from wrong when it comes to their own behaviors. This memorable story brings two people together (Kathy & the Colonel) who have a very distorted view of reality and are barely able to function in the real world. But as bizzare as these two are, the book is about "The House of Sand and Fog" that brought these two together. I wondered as I read it, "Does this house have a darkside too? Some hidden secret that has drawn these two people together where they completely cross the line of reason?" This is definitely a strange and very compelling story which left me feeling unsettled. But it is one I will not soon forget.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have read in a long time!
Review: Not to sound cliche, but this IS one of the best books I have read in a long time. Oprah did well with this pick!

The story has a bit of everything, first off it has the most memorable and unique characters. You can sit and ponder their lives and things they do for hours, if you had the time. The story itself, what takes place is another amazing feature. It pulls you in, shocks you, it makes you cringe, makes you cry...it's a great story.

I highly recommend this book, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of time reading about these pathetic souls
Review: This book was terrible and I struggled to get through it. Finally, skimmed through the end so that I could finally find out what happens to these 3 individuals as they spiral through destruction.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I have to agree with some of the other "less than sparkling" reviews on this book. It starts out with an interesting format and premise, and the character development in the beginning was interesting. I even found it to be somewhat of a page-turner once I got accustomed to each character's "voice."

However, I thought that the author waited too long into the book to give you the real story behind one of the main characters. Also, I became very put off by the repeated and explicitly graphic descriptions of the "romantic interludes" between two of the main characters (no spoilers here!). OK, they had sex--again, now move on. Also, on several occassions, I felt that the auther went into too much and somewhat random detail on the scenery of a particular event (was this a book or is he hoping for a screenplay???), and for me, it just made the book drag.

As for the plot itself, I agree with several other reviewers. I found it to fall flat at the end. The only reason I finished reading the book (which I found the last 100 pages or so to be a chore) was to see what actually happened to the house. I was VERY disappointed by the last chapter. I've read 700 page novels that tended to drag at times as well, but in the end, I understood exactly where the author was coming from and what his or her point of the book was (regardless of whether or not I agreed with it). In the end of this one, I didn't find much of a point nor could I relate with ANY of the characters, as they all spun completely out of control to the point of being unbelievable.

Overall, this book starts off with a great premise, an interesting format, but the author "sells out" to sell books. Maybe a good book for a long plane ride, but don't get your hopes up for anything inspiring or intellectually challenging. To be fair to the author, however, perhaps he is delighted that readers either love or hate his work - if he gets a strong reaction, he has done his job.