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House of Sand and Fog (Oprah's Book Club) (Vintage Contemporaries) |  | Author: Andre Dubus III
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $0.01
as of 11/22/2009 02:09 MST details
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Seller: atlanta-book-company
Rating:  760 reviews
Sales Rank: 27461
Media: Paperback
Edition: Trade
Pages: 365
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0375727345
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375727344
ASIN: 0375727345
Publication Date: March 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, November 2000: Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century. House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day. Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing." The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results. Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest. --Alix Wilber
Product Description
"Elegant and powerful...an unusual and volatile...literary thriller." --Washington Post Book World
In this riveting novel of almost unbearable suspense, three fragile yet determined people become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Colonel Behrani, once a wealthy man in Iran, is now a struggling immigrant willing to bet everything he has to restore his family's dignity. Kathy Niccolo is a recovering alcoholic and addict whose house is all she has left, and who refuses to let her hard-won stability slip away from her. Sheriff Lester Burdon, a married man who finds himself falling in love with Kathy, becomes obsessed with helping her fight for justice.
Drawn by their competing desires to the same small house in the California hills--and what it represents to each of them--and doomed by their tragic inability to understand one another, the three converge on an explosive collision course. Combining unadorned realism with profound empathy, House of Sand and Fog is a devastating exploration of the American Dream gone awry.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 760
 Drama Spilling Over the Pages October 9, 2009
N. M
When I first picked up this book, weeks ago, I had no idea it would be an action filled novel. The novel is split into two parts, and mainly focuses on two characters: Mr.Behrani and Kathy Nicolo.
In part I, we see the alternating narations of Behrany and Kathy. Behrany, a recent iranian immigrant to America struggles to live up to appearances and finds an opportunity in an auctioned house. The house, the main reason of conflict, used to belong to kathy, but due to a mistake, was auctioned off. With Behrani insisting in keeping what is rightfully his, and kathy desperate to regain what was rightfully hers, we enter a world where both parties refuse to step back a second and see the other person's real situation.
I enjoyed the naration up to this point, and maybe most of part II. What I disliked, intensly disliked, about part II was what seemed to be scenes snagged from action movies. Kidnapping? Hostages? Attempted Suicide? Yeah. You get my point.
It was, nevertheless, an interesting read. And its unbelievable ending, its uncomprehensible action filled sections would cause a person to contemplate the real word. Sometimes illogical and unbelievable things occur, right in front of us, but we either turn a blind eye or just accept them with time."
 Received damaged book September 28, 2009
Denay Heddy (San Diego, CA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was very unhappy opening my package. I knew I was purchasing a used book but have always gotten what is described. I didn't see anything telling me there was water damage, stains creases and torn covers. It was not worth the price and I will never buy from this person again.
 Stark. Thought-Provoking. August 15, 2009
Jennifer Donovan (Connecticut, USA)
I saw this movie years ago, and it really stuck with me. The book is equally memorable.
These characters are all stuck in desperate circumstances (or get themselves into them), and the old platitude doesn't exist for no reason at all: desperate times call for desperate measures.
Andres Dubus had been on my radar for a while, but what really convinced me to read this was that it was in recommended reading about the Iranian experience that Mahbod Seraji included at the end of his excellent novel Rooftops of Tehran: A Novel.
The House of Sand and Fog is a stark, serious book, with no fairy-tale happy endings, dealing with the reality of people's choices.
manipulative and uneven August 12, 2009
A reader (Chicago)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a problematic book, to say the least. I almost didn't want to read it because I knew, based on the book jacket description, that it was likely to be extremely depressing. Then I scolded myself for those thoughts because depressing books are often very true to life (sorry, all you sunshiney optimists, but look around you: life is very, very hard for a lot of people). Well, I ended up not enjoying the book all that much, but not because of its grimness. As I noted in the title for this review, it seemed manipulative and uneven.
It seemed manipulative because it felt like Dubus had to force his characters to act in certain ways in order to escalate the tension and drama, which resulted in the characters doing things that struck me as totally unbelievable -- and, as others have said, unsympathetic. The fact that Kathy and Lester kept going to see the Behranis again and again just didn't seem plausible; rather, it seemed like an author who wanted more conflict, more dramatic clashes. And the fact that all of these people seemed so suddenly to engage in the vilest criminal activities is I suppose meant for the reader to think, "This could happen to any of us! We all have the capability of going over the edge!" but simply stretched credibility for me. As another reviewer pointed out, how did these people get to this point alive and intact given how they act during the course of the book?
The sad thing about this -- and this brings me to the "uneven" part -- is that in other places these characters seemed quite believable and even interesting. I like that Dubus chose unusual and marginal points of view for his two first person narrators. How many books feature cleaning ladies as protagonists, after all? I wanted to like the book at first for this reason, but after a while it just didn't work for me.
Finally, as many people have pointed out, Dubus writes well, but this book could have been trimmed by a good hundred pages.
 Worst Book I've Read in a Long Time August 3, 2009
Alicia Mengel (Eastern Idaho)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I grabbed this book at the library, solely because of the Oprah's Book Club logo on the cover. I have enjoyed Oprah's choices in the past, but not this time. I agree with other reviews that the first part is okay, but don't even bother reading the second. All of the main character's were despicable. The plot was thin and unbelievable, and the ending was just plain horrible. I ended up just skimming the last 50 or so pages to get it over with. Two big thumbs down!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 760
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