House of Sand and Fog

Rating:
Summary: A rare treat where a book and a movie complement each other
Review: Having last night seen a screening of the movie adaptation of this book, I can honestly say that I have not been more moved by a feature in years.

This is not a tale for those who want a classic 'winner' and 'loser', or a 'happy ending'.

Without spoiling the plot, Mahmoud (Ben Kingsley) is a former Colonel under the Shah of Iran. He moves to America after Islamic Revolution in 1979 with his wife. They have a daughter and son in America.

Mahmoud longs to bring his family the life they once had, and he thus buys a house at auction for tax deliquency.

Unbeknownst to Mahmoud, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) was the owner of the house, and she was evicted and the house sold due to a bureaucratic error. She has many demons, and the characer's portrayal by Connelly is Oscar-worthy. She can say with her eyes what Andre Dubus so eloquently wrote in the novel.

Similarly, Ben Kingsley, at home in any role, is thoroughly believable as the proud Persian Colonel.

The fundamental questions in this book that will make you think long and hard are: Who has the 'right' to own the house? How will the ownership battle for the somewhat dilapidated, yet charming beach house affect the lives of Mahmoud, his family, and Kathy? What would comprise a 'just' solution?

Andre Dubus has a singular gift for describing his characters in such a way as to elicit raw empathy from the reader. Connelly and Kingsley are actors that do the same.

This is one of the few cases where I would suggest that reading the book before seeing the movie may add to one's appreciation of the movie as a complementary vehicle for understanding these fascinating characters.

If you are intrigued by stories of people struggling through adversity in the context of a very plausible situation then this book and movie will be for you. It is powerfully written, and the characters strength in the face of unrelenting adversity will likely inspire you regardless of what you think of the book and movie's ending.

The book also is worth reading, because this book relates in some way to all of us and the feeling of helplessness we've all felt in our lives at one time or another.

Buy this book. It is worth the price as you will come to read it again when life throws you a curveball. Also, like most excellent novels, it makes you *think*, whether you liked it or not. And that's what I think most readers want to do.

You won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Put it Down!!
Review: This is a great book written by a talented man. I admit the dustjacket story line seemed farfetched and uninteresting to me at first. Once I started the book Mr. Dubus' writing and character development drew me in and kept me engaged to the last word. I was struck by this book and his exploration of the dark side of human nature (thankfully fictional in this case). I stayed up til 4 a.m. on a "school night" to finish it; how many books can you say that about?

Rating:
Summary: House of Sand and....
Review: This book is a really good book. It is extremly realistic and it seems as though you are on the ride with the main characters. The only reason why I give this book 3 stars is that there is way to much descriptive sexual content in this book. It got annoying. Other wise it is a good read.

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Summary: House that kept me reading and thinking
Review: This book was certainly hard to put down once I picked it up, and considering my short attention span that is a real achievement. Especially for the fiction I've read lately. At last a book of some complexity!

Andre Dubus III is an excellent writer, he displays a marvelous feel for the rolling fog and expansive views of the ocean in this mesmerizing and very true to life novel. There are descriptions of the fog and the landscape that are full and rich, they leave you wanting more. There are lines in this story that I just had to read a few times over, they were extremely inviting like a cool ocean beckoning for swimmers.

My favorite characters were Kathy and Mr. Behrani. Sometimes the cutting reality of Kathy's dialogue is a little hard to believe. Of course it is conceivable that someone could have such rich thoughts, I just find it a little mismatched in places, especially Kathy's comparisons to the white snake and her intelligent thoughts about all of the treatment programs she had been too. I guess it's just hard for me to envision a really intelligent girl being so weak and irrational. I find it hard to believe that she would just glom on to Lester, in just a couple of days. That she would have such incredible insight and then still have the decisions she makes, so poor, so naive, that I still again, have a hard time believing that this could be the very same Kathy that the reader has also witnessed making at times some very keen observations. The two Kathy's just don't always come together.

Mr. Behrani is an extremely intelligent man who is so prideful and trapped in his image that he is willing to do whatever it takes. The two characters and their tension over the house really jumped out at me as an inside look at what it might be like to be an Isrealite and Palestinian. I found myself really comparing the two situations especially when you see that Mrs. Behrani and Esmail are sympathetic to Kathy, and Kathy to the Behranis. The tension over the house and the question of who is the rightful owner, certainly rang true of the battle between Palestine and Isreal.

Lester Burdon kind of jumped out at me as representing the innocent but not-so-innocent United States, who is always putting its nose into other peoples business and trying to be the mighty do-gooder at all costs. I felt that Lester really threw a monkey wrench into things. As the United States can sometimes do. Lester tries too hard to understand, he is a likeable person who doesn't always do the right thing, he is headed straight for the top, and his indescretion of planting the evidence is softly portrayed as 'necessary,' so the reader looks the other way.

But dare we look the other way? I couldn't.

The weavings of this tale are fine and full of color just as the persian rugs Dubus describes. The feelings of being displaced, without a home, nowhere to go. So real, so true. And he asks the question of his characters: What will you do for your home? How far will you go to save your home? This is one of the reasons I truly feel this is one of the great books of our time.

The concepts of peace and war are inherent in this book. Especially the Behranis reason for leaving Iran. I kept saying to myself that Andre Dubus must be trying to get the reader to think about the situation and to see how complicated it really is. Mr. Dubus is certainly a worthy prizewinner, and I highly recommend his intricately designed weaving, "House of Sand and Fog."

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Summary: This is Oprah's Book Club?
Review: What a horrible book! This book splits itself into two parts. The second part is anticlimactic and is a complete let down. The first part sets up nicely the conflict and the characters. However, at the second part of the book, the author takes the story in a ridiculous direction that was unbelievable and out of character. The finale completely wastes everything done to have us like or follow the storyline (since not all of the characters were completely likable). The ending gave no satisfaction for the conflict, resolution for the characters individual predicaments, and no finale message or statement.

The author clearly put in a lot of work into making his characters authentic and likable. The Persian Colonel is believable and shows that a lot of research was done into his country, his culture, and his Middle Eastern immigrant population in Northern California. The book was writen in an interesting narrative that kept me engaged in the characters and their story. However, the outlandish direction the book ends up in left nothing for me to appreciate the effort made to keep my attention.

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Summary: This book's plot was derived from a real life story...
Review: To Virginia, USA who felt the story was unbelievable, I thought it would be interesting for you to know that the basic plot was taken from an actual situation in California. I heard the author being interviewed on NPR and he explained that he had read about a woman who lost her home because of overdue back taxes on the property. It wasn't until after the home had been auctioned to a new owner, that the county's error was discovered (the woman didn't owe a dime) but the new owner was allowed to keep the home. Just an interesting point I thought...

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Summary: House of Sand and Aaarrrgggghhhh!
Review: I read this book about a year ago, and I hated it, so I will admit now that I don't remember more than just the basic plot points. I am, however, listening to an interview on NPR with the author, and the fact that anyone LIKED this book really just ticks me off.

The impression that I have carried with me, and that I give to anyone who asks me what I thought of this book, is that there is nothing about the characters to make me feel sympathetic to them. They're whiny, selfish, self-absorbed, and by the end of the book I was so annoyed with all of them that I was not disappointed to see that their lives fell apart. I guess the only merit to the book, then, is that so many people ARE as whiny, selfish and self-absorbed as these characters are portrayed, so it's realistic in it's own way, but I believe the novel was attempting to create empathy for the characters pain, and all I wanted to do was slap them all upside their annoying, cranky, pouting heads.

Don't waste your time with this one.

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Summary: Thanks a lot...
Review: Marvelousmom from Salt Lake City, if you're going to post a review, please keep crucial plot points out of it so those of us who want to read the book (or see the upcoming movie) can go into it without already knowing the outcome! Sheesh!

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Summary: A bleak, monochrome picture of human existence
Review: I had to force myself to keep reading until the last page of this book, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it was over. What a bleak, monochrome picture of human existence! What a slow, tedious pace the story takes as it inches its way over 365 pages!

I guess I have to give the author credit for trying a few interesting things. He tells the story in the first person from the perspective of its two main characters, alternating between them. Then in the second half of the novel adds the perspective of another character, this time conveying that point of view in the third person. We have to sympathize with each of these characters, and this is interesting because the characters are basically at war with each other over the disputed ownership of a house. Never mind that the eviction plot point is completely unrealistic; at least it establishes a conflict that put the characters into a visceral opposition. Each one is basically right, but of course somebody must end up the loser. Dubus' unfortunate solution is to make them all losers, and in a way that crosses far into the territory of melodrama.

In the hands of a skilled novelist, the struggle over the house might have represented something larger than itself; I'm thinking of T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain (which Dubus is very much in debt to for many of his ideas here), where the conflict between newly-arrived immigrant and native born makes us see some fundamental conflicts that lie at the core of our society. I couldn't see that House of Sand and Fog adds up to anything nearly that significant. It's point seems to be that people have trouble seeing beyond their own immediate interests and that this leads to tragedy for all. Maybe if the characters had been a little more interesting the lack of depth wouldn't have mattered, but they struck me as pretty bland. Kathy's struggles with her addictive tendencies didn't make me feel what it's like to go through that particular ring of Hell. Behrani's dropping a Farsi word into every sentence was a cheap (and rather annoying!) device to convey his ethnicity; Dubus clearly did some research into Iranian culture and history, but it wasn't enough to cast a believable aura of ethnic color around this character.

On top of all that, I found a number of plain-old careless errors on the author's part - the kind of things they call "continuity errors" when they happen in movies. Not helpful in the old suspension of disbelief.

This book came highly recommended to me by a friend whose taste I trust, so I was very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Movie - I just saw it
Review: I saw the movie tonight in NYC and it is amazing. I met the screenwriter Shawn Otto who did a great job turning a good novel into a great screenplay. Ben Kingsley does an amazing job as Behrani, proving once again he is one of the greatest living actors in the world.

I believe Ben Kingsley will certainly be nominated for an Academy Award and the movie will also be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Jennifer Connolly and the rest of the cast do a capable job. But its hard to shine when you're next to the star of Sir Kingsley.