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
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

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 resotre his family's dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a troubled young woman 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 doomed by their tragic inability to understand one another, the three converge in an explosive collision course. Combining unadorned realism with profound empathy, House of Sand and Fog marks the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.

This book is written in two parts. The first part establishes the conflict between the two main characters (a former Colonel in the Iranian air force, who fled Iran with his family to the US after the fall of the Shah; and a young American woman who is a recovering drug addict), both of whom wind up having legal rights to the same home, a modest bungalo in the San Francisco bay area. The home has strong symbolism for both characters, and neither will compromise in any way to resolve the growing crisis. This part of the book is gripping, absorbing, and moves forward relentlessly. The story is told from the first person and alternates between the colonel and the woman. Part one concludes after about 220 pages (in the paperback version, anyway) with the two characters established and on a collision course; yet you can see the hints at the end of this section of ways in which the situation might be resolved.

My advice is to read to this point, and then put the book away. The second part (last third or so of the book) degenerates into a story of kidnapping, hostage taking, and gun-toting that is so formulaic that is is frankly silly. A third charcter becomes pivotal, but his story is always told from the third person (for some reason; who knows why) wheras the stories of the othe two main characters continue to be told from the first person. The ending is probably supposed to be "tragic" but it is in fact so predictable, once you see where Part II is going, that I actually threw the book accross the room in disgust. The story morphs from an interesting contemporary novel to the worst made-for-TV movie you've ever seen. The main characters seem to realize how ridiculous the story is becoming; unfortunately, the author never does.

Read the first part, which really is an interesting story, and could stand on its own as a short novel, and skip the rest.


avert your eyes   November 21, 2000
 75 out of 84 found this review helpful

There's an old saying : even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile. Based on what I've seen on the rest of the list, this is Oprah's acorn.

Before coming to America, Genob Sarhang Massoud Amir Behrani was a colonel in the Iranian Air Force. Forced to flee when the Shah fell, he escaped with his wife and two children and a couple hundred thousand dollars. Now resettled in the San Francisco area, but thus far unable to find work in the aerospace industry, Behrani works two full time jobs, on a road crew and as a convenience store clerk. This labor is necessary because the family's money is dwindling quickly, thanks to his wife's insistence on maintaining their old standard of living and the need to put on a sufficiently opulent facade to get his daughter safely married off--for instance, their apartment costs $3000 per month. Then one day, noticing an announcement of a tax auction in the newspaper, he decides to use their remaining savings to buy the house and then try to turn it around quickly for a profit.

Meanwhile, the house had previously belonged to Kathy Niccolo, a recovering alcoholic whose addict husband has run out on her. She works as an independent house cleaner, barely making ends meet and ignored the county tax bill because it should not have been assessed against her house. But now she has been evicted and, though Legal Aid lawyers help her to win a judgment from the county, they can not make Behrani give up the house, only compensate her. She also receives help from Sheriff Lester Burdon, whose marriage has lost it's passion, and the two become lovers. Together, and separately, they begin to take steps to force the Behranis out of their new home. Things get ugly.

This book is a page turner anyway, but it enveloped me in such a cloud of dread that I just kept reading faster and faster because I couldn't stand the thought of what was to come. I know some of the reviewers have said that Dubus evokes sympathy for all the characters; I strongly disagree. Colonel Behrani is a perfect example of why anti-immigration policies are insane. He works his tail off to provide a better life for his family and wants nothing from anyone except to be left alone to pursue the American Dream. He resembles a tragic hero, whose stubborn pride and unshakable faith in his dreams collude to help destroy him.

Kathy, on the other hand, even setting aside her addiction problems, has irresponsibly allowed legal events to get out of hand and now burns with a sense of false entitlement. Her lackadaisical approach to her job stands in stark contrast to Behrani's willingness to humble himself to take virtually any job. Her relationship with Lester results in his leaving a wife and two young children, a wife whose only failure is that Lester feels for her as he would towards a sister--hardly reason to destroy a family. And this step is merely Lester's first in a chain which becomes increasingly dubious, until his behavior can only be defined as pathological. By the end of the story I was begging Behrani to go and get a gun and put these two out of his misery.

Andre Dubus III is the son of one of America's greatest short story writers. His Dad having passed on, it's heartening to see him pick up the reigns. But please, have mercy on the reader; I could barely stand the last hundred pages of this book, I was so distraught. If you can withstand a story that is like watching a car accident in which one of your friends is driving, I heartily recommend this novel, but it's not for the faint of heart.

GRADE : A-


Pointless and manipulative   November 10, 2003
 73 out of 147 found this review helpful

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.


Tragedy in a strong voice   May 3, 2000
 72 out of 77 found this review helpful

Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog gave me another hint of mortality, not solely because of the tragic tale. I now find that one of my favorite writers is the son of one of my favorite writers. (Amis and Amis, Buckley and Buckley also come to mind.) This book is a nuanced tale with five very strong main characters in the best traditions of the old tragedies. An Iranian colonel who has fled with his family to America following the fall of the Pahlavi government, finally seizes an opportunity to put that family back on a financially comfortable plain. He buys, at a tax auction, a very modest bungalow in a San Francisco suburb. He is pleasantly suprised when he learns that house could be sold for as much as four times what he paid for it, and unpleasantly surprised when it appears the county erred in seizing and auctioning the property. Although he is on firm legal ground, the moral ground is a swamp, populated by two reptilian characters, Kathy, a recovering drug abuser cum housecleaner, and Lester, a philandering deputy sheriff. The themes of self interest, denial, greed, moral certitude, moral ambiguity and xenophobia run like golden threads through this novel. Dubus III is an original voice and this novel is a breakthrough. The story is complex and rich. You only get a glimpse of his ability in his collection of short stories, The Cagekeeper. Buy this book. By far, the best I've read in a while.


Inaccurate portrayal of California   December 5, 2000
 48 out of 87 found this review helpful

It amazes how many people from California gave this book reviews without mentioning that it is completely inaccurate about California! The plot and characters may be very well drawn, but as a Californian, I found it diffcult to keep myself from hurling the book across the room.

It caused me to laugh out loud at some of the ludicrous inaccuracies and even do research to make sure I hadn't lost my mind. Corona is a real place in California. It is 427 miles from San Francisco. About the same distance as Erie PA is from Chicago Il. It is aprox. 50 miles from the beach. The mental picture of any house in Corona (a valley) having a widow's walk that would give it a view of the beach is laughable! If you want it to be set in a fictional location then make sure such a place doesn't exist in the state.

If the book takes place in roughly 1993 (based on Shah Pahlavi fleeing Iran Jan 5, 1979, Nadi hasn't seen her sister in 14 years and Esmail was a tiny, as well as mentioning CD stores, rather than record) then most of the rest of the portrayal of California is woefully inaccurate. Kathy would not casually light a cigarette in a restaurant or a lawyers office--it's illegal. 7-11's are open 24 hours, so its hard to picture Les getting there right before it closes. Carl's Jr. is a fast food restaurant, they do deliver the food to the table, after you have ordered at the counter. At a self serve gas station you pay before you pump, so that people can't drive off without paying. You can't even pump gas until you have paid. It amazes me that it was even published with this many things that are not possible in California.

Perhaps that is a problem with publishers having only a New York perspective. Would they publish a book with a person in a New York deli putting mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich?? But light up a cigarette indoors in California, in public, and no one even mentions its unacceptable and illegal, would never happen! Suggestions that this should get a Pulitzer? I suggest that they should proofread for accuracy!