House of Sand and Fog

Rating:
Summary: not for the faint-hearted
Review: This is not a book for the expectant reader, or one which takes reading as a way to pass time on the commute to work. Written beautifully, and with acute attention to character detail, the reader is enveloped in a world that feels like a movie but is acted out in "real life." The struggles of each character are what I find most appealing about the book. Each character finds difficulty in communicating, in understanding compassion and, ultimately, in responding to situations that occur outside of one's protective, private world. It is how these characters deal with these issues that is most intriguing, and most compelling to the reader. If you are looking for a real novel, without the whistles and bells, without happy closures and tidy conclusions, pick up the House of Sand and Fog.

Rating:
Summary: More than plot and characters, great book experience
Review: This was a slow read for me. I think there's some internal pacing going on, where only so much darkness and be ingested at a time. Plot, characters etc are secondary to how this book can move the reader. It's an experience. To recap the book's content, for me, does not, explain the effect of the book.

Dubus wrote a tragedic novel that read, for me, like a timeless story of how close to madness life can be. We may live in parallel universes where each small decision leds us to the universe of redemption or to the universe of utter madness. We skip from one to the other with each decision. Unfortunately only saints or such are able stay on the course of redemption.

I do not usually stumble across a reading experience like House of Sand and Fog, especially in today's world of formula story telling, formula diagloue and formula publishing.

Rating:
Summary: disturbing...
Review: This was a page-turning, suspenseful, intriguing novel that kept me enraptured throughout the progressive story. However, when I finished reading it, I was left feeling totally disturbed...a dark twisted blackness feeling which was over-whelming. It was almost too heavy for me to process. So, I made a friend read the novel, so that I'd have someone to vent to and commisserate with. Readers beware....once you read this book, you'll never be able to forget it!!!

Rating:
Summary: The American "Nightmare" is no Dream...
Review: This realistic story of the American dream gone awry opens with Iranian-American Colonel Behrani quitting his job on the highway cleaning crew and deciding to buy a house as an investment. He finds that houses that have been seized by the government for a variety of reasons are for sale at public auction for very good prices. He needs to buy the house and resell it to make money in order to keep up appearances for his family and for his standing in the stuffy exiled Iranian community in which they live. On the other side of the wrangling is Kathy Nicolo, a recovering drug user (and alcoholic) housecleaner whose husband has left her and who for months has been ignoring the notices from the county. Early in the book she is evicted by a team of police officers that includes deputy Lester Burdon who helps her find legal counsel and a place to stay and then continues his involvement with her.

The intensity of the anger, fear and to a great extent confusion that riles up these three protagonists is palpable. The miscommunications become greater and more horribly effective in turning what should have been a legal fight into a personal one. It is true that Kathy should not have been evicted, but it is also true that the Colonel purchased the house rightfully and legally. This is a somewhat fascinating book because neither one of the principal characters is particularly likeable but they are so human in their realities that any reader can appreciate what they are experiencing. My only issue with the whole plot and storyline was the believability of the character of the sheriff. As the struggle for the house becomes more dramatic, the reader is drawn into what becomes a bit of a thriller to a very powerful climax. As someone who lives overseas and can see how immigrants are really treated in our country - this book should be a powerful eye-opener for Americans.

Rating:
Summary: Great, tense read
Review: This is one of those books where all the characters are converging on a giant train wreck, and you're dying to jump in and stop them. It is impossible not to be drawn into their lives and individual tragedies. It was a very quick read, which is my only complaint. I could have spent much more time with this story and not have felt I wanted it to end.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully written, but oh so depressing...
Review: Before you are far along in this book you will realize that the two main characters are on a collision course that can't end happily. However you are so drawn into their conflict that you will be unable to put the book down, much as a car wreck is so hard not to look at.

The story is of
a) a former Colonel in the Iran army, who has had to flee Iran after the Shah was deposed. He has been unable to establish himself in the U.S., although he has NOT told his family of his problems.
b) an unfocused young woman who loses her house because she ignores the State's request for her to pay her property taxes.

The colonel buys her house in an auction for cheap, and sees himself establishing himself by buying and selling property. The woman wants the house back, as it's the last thing she's got.

Rating:
Summary: A struggling tragedy
Review: This is a tough book to review, so let's get rid of the negatives first...

The plot was thin - ice thin. It threatened to fall apart any time and the climax was verging on absolute silliness. It's the sort of plot that Stephen King could just about pull off by delving deeper into the characters and the story build-up but, in a 368 pager, there just wasn't the time to give that sort of scenario construction. Part of the problem was poor characterization. I didn't feel empathy for any of the protagonists/antagonists (they were neither, but both), so their actions were not totally credible. I don't want to spoil the plot, but the actions of the Les Burdon, the policeman, were particularly nonsensical.

Like other reviewers, I was struck by a feeling of having been on a training course for manic depressives. Most stories (even tragedies that end in death and disaster) have you hoping for better things as the story progresses, or leave you with some feeling of hope at the end. House of Sand and Fog did neither. My mood simply became blacker as the plot progressed. In one way, this could be claimed to be a victory since at least the story touched me, but this victory was incomplete because of the poor plot, which distracted me too often from being able to sink into the book.

On the brighter side, the prose and the speech patterns were excellent and I'm sure that this author, given a different subject, will succeed in lifting my spirits instead of dooming me to an insipid weekend.

Rating:
Summary: A Tragedy of Human Conditions
Review: In The House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III creates a runaway suspenseful conflict between an immigrant family man and an unstable single woman over the rightful ownership of a beachfront house. Dubus takes human conditions such as pride, instability, and heroic desires then displays them in the three main characters Colonel Behrani, Kathy Nicolo, and Sheriff Lester Burdon.

Colonel Behrani, a once wealthy man who has been exiled from Iran is now living in the United States trying to support his family on a low income. He is still filled with the arrogance and importance of the wealth his leadership in the Iranian military brought, but this arrogance does nothing for him in the United States except make his life miserable. In the beginning of the book, the reader finds this character explaining a clash with a co-worker to his supervisor on the highway garbage detail. He says, "In my country I could have ordered him beaten...I was a colonel in the Imperial Air Force".

Hiding from his family how dirty and laborious his new career is, he showers before he goes home and changes into a suit. His work breaks are spent searching the classified ads for real estate or some business he can invest his treasured savings he brought with him from Iran. When he finds a real bargain, his efforts to get rich quick from buying auctioned real estate raise not only his own lowered self-esteem but that of his family's as well. The house becomes a symbol of reassurance, and a renewed pride is found.

But, the house was taken wrongfully from Kathy Nicolo, a recovering drug addict who has just been abandoned by her husband. She has been getting eviction notices for months, though, from the IRS, but she never opened the letters. She is a pretty, but depressed woman who spends most of her time trying to escape from the world by watching TV.

Dubus shows Kathy's first thoughts as "My husband got to miss all this". The reader finds through Nicolo's voice a victim and a woman too ashamed to tell her mother or brother that she lost the house. She isolates herself from everyone but the Sheriff who evicted her.

Dubus portrays Sheriff Lester Burdon as a codependent man with irrational desires to help the downtrodden. He befriends Kathy and then falls in love with her. With feelings of courtly love for a victimized woman, and the realism of leaving his wife and children behind, Burdon slides down the rabbit hole with Kathy and the Colonel in their struggle over the beachfront house. The characters, each of them, have unmet needs and all their desires hinge on who shall become the actual owner of the house.

Dubus took me into the minds of each of these characters and let me see a spinning, out of control world through their eyes. By writing from each character's point of view, he put the me in a judicial position while he defined miscommunication and self-interest.

One of the most thought provoking tales of how realistically dangerous miscommunication can be, The House of Sand and Fog kept me turning page after page. The end of the story tugged at me as much as an illusive dream has followed me throughout the waking day. This book was an excellent read.

Rating:
Summary: Clash of Cultures
Review: For Kathy Nicolo, the house on Bisgrove Street represents all she has left after her husband leaves her. For Iranian Colonel Behrani, it represents a foor in the door to the American dream. When a bureaucratic mistake makes Behrani the owner of the home that Kathy is determined to get back at any cost, the inevitable clash - both of cultures and of human beings - is revealed by this book.

Dubus's writing takes the reader relentlessly through the book. You are able to understand what drives the characters and take sympathy with each of them.

What some of the other readers have said is true - the characters do make bad decisions, and the book is at the end quite sad. However, that does not make it any less realistic or important of a book.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy Heart
Review: It's with a heavy heart that I write this review. For two reasons, one is the loss of a number of characters in this book who I honestly grew to love; they are impecabbly drawn by the author, they are fully rounded individuals. Second reason for my sadness is the sheer force of tragedy that occurs at the end of the book. There is not a ray of hope amongst the horrible ending. I loved it. I wouldn't have changed a word.

The story sounds simple, a house is contested between an Iranian immigrant and his family; and a woman who was wrongly evicted who has a local officer firmly behind her because of his incurable love for her. Like all great novels, it is not the plot but the characters that will be remembered. The plot as it stands begins slowly, almost like a romance, but veers unpredictably into Part 2 when the pace quickens into a thriller. That's all I'll reveal about the plot which requires a clean slate to be fully adored.

It's the characters that I would prefer to focus on. The Behrani family allowed me to care for a culture I know little about. The parents are in mourning for their lost lifestyle in Iran where they were treated as royalty. Mrs Behrani cries in a locked bedroom to express her sorrow but Mr Behrani fights on hoping to make the family as successful in this new country. Their daughter has thankfully married a rich suitor but her pity for her father infuriates him. Their son, whose character is the least flawed in the novel, has adapted well to this new culture in America.

On the opposition side is Kathy Nicolo and Lester Burden (geddit? burden). Kathy's life is a sad existence. An alcoholic herself, she was forced into an extreme rehab programme by her ex who has now left her. Her life is in tatters. She is helped by an unhappily married policeman who falls steadfast in love with her. Burden's character became more interesting as the story developed. Because the novel is spoken through Kathy and Mr Behrani's eyes we don't know an awful lot about Burden. I had doubts about him but they never reached fruition. In fact, Burden was just a kind soul who had married into a loveless marriage and was desperately in search of a soulmate.

So who do you root for? I think most readers will root for the Behrani's. Kathy's relationship with Burden seems to be true love. Her future looks bright. Her only reason to long for it back is that it was her family's and she seems afraid to call home and tell them about her wasted life. She should move away from her past and head into a future which looks much rosier. Mr Behrani's purchase of the house symbolises his entry onto America's ladder of success. To give it up would throw him off that ladder.

A House of Sand and Fog moved me. Never before have I felt so wretched after a read. Both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye rank as my top two because of their ability to make me rejoice. This novel may do the opposite but that shouldn't prevent it from joining those two classics onto my new top three list.