This story posed an interesting dilemma. Due to a mistake in the county tax office, a woman is evicted from her home and it is sold at auction for a third of it's value. What would you do if you were the purchaser? Would you simply sell it back to the county for the same amount? That is the remedy the county proposed. But Colonel Behrani, the man who purchased the home, is fighting for his family's survival. A recent immigrant from Iran, he has been unable to find a decent job and they have gradually used almost all their savings. His hope is to resell the home for a profit and have enough to start a business. He feels that the woman should file suit against the county for wrongful eviction. The wild card in the picture is Lester, one of the detectives who enforced the eviction notice. For some inexplicable reason, he falls head over heels for her, and walks away from his marriage, his kids and his job just to be with her. I suppose this could happen, but it seemed a bit contrived to me. If he had not become so personally involved, it would not have escalated to the tragedy that it turned into.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Contemporary + Literary Fiction

This is a story that follows two main characters. The first is Mr. Behrani, a man who served as a colonel in the Iranian Air Force during the time of the Shah and who has a strong desire to live with his family in a respectful manner. He grabs the opportunity to buy a beautiful house from the county at one of its auctions for a very attractive price.

The second main character is Kathy Nicolo. She is a recovering addict and the former owner of the house that the colonel purchased. She thinks the county has wrongfully taken her property, which should be returned to her.

Things get even more complicated when a married cop gets involved with Kathy and loves her, so he tries to help her get the house back in any possible way. But how everything ends is truly tragic for everyone.

I went into this book knowing the whole story because I watched the movie adaptation many years ago and loved it so much. I wanted to see how the book was compared to the movie. I’m glad to say that the book is really well-written and intense. The narration is in first-person style and told from the two main characters’ POVs. Towards the middle of the book, a new narration from the cop’s POV is introduced, but that one is in third-person style.

The story is really tense and sad. What I like about the author’s style is that there is no clear hero or villain in the story. The characters are just normal people who try to survive by making right or wrong decisions. No two readers will agree on who is right or who is wrong in this story.

House of Sand and Fog is a genuinely thought-provoking novel. It delves into themes of grief, loss, identity, and survival. With such a moving story, many readers will have to take sides. Both the main characters and the other characters were well-developed. I preferred the movie ending more than the book because it was more dramatic. The ending in the book is excellent, too, but it is more subtle.

All the actors in the film adaptation did a great job bringing these characters alive, but if I had to pick one name whose performance never left my mind, it has to be Shohreh Aghdashloo for playing Mrs. Behrani. She gave a very emotional and raw performance. I don’t understand why she didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year. After reading this book, I will be looking forward to reading more books by Andre Dubus III in the future.

شاهدت فلم منزل الرمل والضباب منذ عدة سنوات ولكن بمرور الأيام لم أعد اتذكر منه إلا بعض التفاصيل. وسعيت للحصول على نسخة الالكترونية من الرواية أثناء تصفحي للكتب المقترحة في نادي أوبرا وينفري للقراءة. وتحكي الرواية قصة امرأة تدعي كاثي وهي مدمنة سابقة على المخدرات هجرها زوجها وبسبب إهمالها لمتابعة سجلات الضرائب تم بيع منزلها بالمزاد العلني على جنرال إيراني الأصل. وهذا الجنرال مسعود بهراني هرب من إيران مع أسرته وأقام في أمريكا وكان يعيش حياته بوجهين، وجه الرفاهية وادعاء الغنى أمام مجتمع المهاجرين الإيرانيين في أمريكا ووجه العمل في جمع النفايات والبيع في محطة الوقود لساعات طويلة فقط لجمع المال الذي يمكنه من شراء منزل. يقوم الخلاف بين كاثي ومسعود بسبب ذلك المنزل المشؤوم والذي يمزج رمال صحراء إيران مع ضباب سان فرانسيسكو. نهاية الرواية بها عبرة تبقى في الذاكرة.

لغة الرواية واضحة وسلسة واستخدم المؤلف الكثير من المفردات الفارسية والعادات والتقاليد لربط الحوار بالثقافة الإيرانية.
شخصيات الرواية قليلة العدد ولذلك لم أجد صعوبة في ربط المواقف بالشخوص.
هناك تطويل وتفاصيل قللت من عنصر التشويق في الرواية لا سيما في الثلث الأخير منها. استغرق قراءة الرواية وقتا أطول من المعتاد.
قدم المؤلف نهاية جيدة للرواية ولكنه عاد وأحيا القصة مرة أخرى وكان من الأفضل ان يترك للقارئ التنبؤ بما سيأتي بعد نقطة النهاية.

Masterful execution of the craft of fiction. The pacing is powerful and seductive. The use of voice to convey gender roles and cultural norms is vivid. I found myself getting lost in my own visual construction of the scenes. The ending was totally unexpected and poignant until the last word. However, the finale was emotionally draining and sad if you are a sensitive soul! Beware.

Absolutely brilliant. I read this book during a challenging period in my life. It was surprisingly helpful in that it showed me just how badly things can go sideways under the right (or wrong) circumstances. I realized in reading it that no matter how dark things may look at the moment, they can almost certainly get worse if you let them. Be happy with your own personal circumstances and challenges...

This is a very grim tale about the chance intersection of the lives of three strangers. Luck (good or bad) and circumstance can be powerful forces that can dramatically alter the paths of our lives, and that is the message in this powerful, moving novel. Yet this is not a story about fate. It is a story of stress, shame, pressure, insecurity, fear and the all-powerful need to survive. We will claw our way through life if necessary. The House of Sand and Fog forces us to take a long, terrifying stare into that cold and unapologetic side of ourselves lurking beneath the surface. Hopefully far beneath.

I loved this book, and I would recommend it to anyone (adults only), but with the following cautionary disclaimer: this is *not* a feel good book. It is not entertaining. You will love and hate the three main characters at different times, and you will look at your own messes differently. You will look at your lot in life differently. this book *will* affect you. It is an intense ride on an out-of-control emotional roller coaster that will leave you humbled.

Read it.

Hated it. Really. This is the book that convinced me that Oprah has bad taste. I confess I couldn't even finish it. We had a rule in my bookclub that if you didn't finish the book, you had to bring and appetizer - the theory being if the book was horrible the food would be divine. It worked. I don't think any of us like the book, but Anne-Marie's cheese dip was delicious.

This rating is much higher than the book deserves. it could be the most idiotic story i've ever read.

Hated the characters, hated the story, hated the book. Don't enjoy reading anything when you can't identify with or even like any of the characters. Wanted everyone to die so the book would be over....not a good way to feel about a story.

It took less than a chapter for me to realize this was not a book I wanted to finish. The entire time I was reading that chapter I felt as if I were watching a car wreck. It's not as if I demand a book be all happiness and sunshine but I didn't get the feeling that there was going to be anything redeeming about this book for me. As much as I appreciate that Oprah has been instrumental in getting people to read, it seems to me that so many of her books are absolute downers. I don't see how people can read her suggestions month to month and not feel utterly depressed.

3.4 starts. the first half of this book is poetic, chilling, fascinating. like watching a beautiful chandler crash onto the ground in slow motion. but then the second half departs on a.... ::mild spoiler alert:: ...precipitous decent into chaos in a unbelievable manner. the characters act in ways i just could not believe, and often "lamp shade" their unbelievable actions by thinking to themselves how preposterous their actions are.

After finishing House of Sand and Fog, I read some reviews on Kindle. Most gave four or five stars but scattered among those were a few one and two stars with comments such as 'the sale of the house could have been prevented, the premise just wasn't plausible and landscape description was wrong.'

The House was the center, the subject and even in the title of the book. The two main characters, an Iranian military colonel under the Shah who brought his family to America after the fall of the Shah otherwise they would be excuted; and a recovering addict (Kathy) whose husband left her. The third main character is a married deputy sheriff who falls in love with Kathy. The characters seem to circle the house as the center of their universe loosing sight (or never knowing) what is really important in their life. Eventually they end in the perfect storm. Their storm is due, in part, to "their tragic inability to understand one another" as stated on the back cover. The lack of cultural differences simply makes the lack of understanding even deeper and more profound.

The book is written in the first person by some main characters and although it skips back and fourth, it was not confusing to me at all. Written in the first person gave me a clear picture of what the character was mentally going through. Metaphors weave throughout the book and I found Dubus' writing very skillful.

A book to read when it's bright and sunny because it's not uplifting at all but nevertheless, it is very, very good.

I stand with the five stars on this engrossing book and look forward to reading Dubus' memoir which came out earlier this year.

This book is an excellent example of how suspense can be combined with "serious fiction" via character development. I think what really sold me on this book is Part 2. I like how Dubus allows the reader to empathize with all the characters in the book. Although all of the characters the Colonel, Kathy, and Lester are at one point or another at fault in the tragedy that transpired in the end, one feels like the way they acted to create the tragedy is consistent with their innate human personalities, that given in other circumstances would be seen as admirable. For example, the colonel dogged insistence on keeping the house can be seen as someone who just wants the American Dream and the ambition that comes with working hard and doing things legally, Kathy wanting her house back can be seen as someone who feels that she is spiraling out of control and wants the only stable thing in her life, and Lester's passion to do everything for Kathy can be seen as extreme loyalty to a love object. In the end, the book shows human frailty can lead to disasterous consequences when not use appropriately. I also like how each moment in the book there was room to deescalate the problem but as each characters steps towards escalation, it leads to a point of no return; so much so that inertia toward tragedy seems almost inevitable. I enjoyed how Part 2 was so fast pace and hurried in contrast to Part 1 that it seemed that each wrong step that could have been avoided if the characters had the time to think about their actions was actually believable given the pace of the storyline in which people only have time to react to the present situation. I also enjoyed how the characters just like the readers seem to not know how their actions would play out.

The book shows how escalation of provocation is dangerous because one is committed towards a course of ones action despite internal feelings on the contrary. I like how Dubus shows internal dialogue this contrary to the characters external action but because external action is already done it seems the inertia of destiny has already taken place regardless of how one feels about the action. Perhaps this a man's point of view, do women feel the need to see an action to completion despite its doomed nature?

I enjoy the juxtaposition between the Colonel who wants to control his destiny and that of his family and Kathy Nicolo who has lost control of her life and thus is in path of destructive behavior that consumes everything in her path. I also like the small bungalow represents opportunity for one while needed stability for the other.

As it stands this book is about America's dispossessed citizens in a recession and how during economic difficulty they fight for the same finite resources. In this book, the fight for finite resources comes in the form of a foreclosed house due to tax lien that was overdue. The book is interesting because it presents both aspirations of immigrant trying to regain lost respectability as well as a working middle class woman who wants to retain that American middle class dream of owning a home, having a family, and living a secure and comfortable life.
The two main characters of the book is a former Iranian colonel in the who ended up in the US after the Shah was overthrown and a lower-middle class woman who inherited the house from her father. Although this colonel had procurement duties in the Iranian air force and thus knew military hardware and would have made a perfect sales man for military contractor, no one hired him in the US. So, he was forced to take menial jobs to support the life that his family is accustomed to. For him, the house represents a return to respectability via a real estate speculator and thus freedom from menial jobs of his recent past. As of right now, my sympathies lie with the former Iranian colonel because his trying to reach for the American dream by reclaiming his lost glory by speculating on real estate. Although there are things that are negative about Iranian colonel such as his disdain for regular fat middle class Americans as well his tendency to slap around his wife, he is much more stable personality than Kathy and Lester. His view that as a whole 1st generation and 2nd generation Americans work harder than multi-generational Americans is an interesting concept because it is immigrants who know what is like not to have anything that are the hungriest to make the most of American opportunity. Or as in the Iranian case trying to regain the lost glories of the past, that allow them to stimulate the economy by being productive members of society.

One can see this in the Iranian son who take another job in a paper route that in order to pay for his college education.

Kathy Nicolo on the other hand represents the working middle class worker who comes from a normal middle class home but who as a teenager got involved in drugs and alcohol and now she is trying to right her past wrongs when the county suddenly forecloses her property for not paying taxes. Now, she is trying to stay clean but her husband recently left her which led her to stop opening her mail. Since she stopped opening her mail, she failed to see that she owed taxes on her house and her house was about to be foreclosed b/c her former husband did not pay the tax that he owed due to his false business that he had in his house. It is hard to sympathize with Kathy, unless one has gone through and survive the horrors of addiction, because she comes from a stable middle class home and her troubles is really of her own doing.

I think this reading is poignant today for the recession and massive foreclosures because it gives a face to the numbing statistics of these foreclosures. At this point in the book, it is hard to sympathize with Kathy because she continuously is engaged with self-destructive behavior such as sleeping with a married man who although insist that she is not a kept woman treats her as such. Also, the fact that she seems to have lower-class mannerism such as going to the house and randomly shouting at people does not make her more endearing to me. Both Kathy and the Lester Burdon seem to have a life careening out of control and the only way they feel they can regain a center again is by getting the Kathy's house back.

How dare Lester Burdon go and threaten the Iranian colonel to kick them out of a house that according to the law is rightfully his! Here is a novel idea, why doesn't Kathy sue the county for the amount that the Iranian wants for the house and buy back the house from him.

In my view, Kathy and Lester are the antagonist in this story because their general messed-up life is spreading towards other people. Although one can feel for Kathy because she is trying to get her life together, she is also annoying because the more she tries the more her life spirals downward to the wrong place. As for Lester, the fact that he is facing custody challenges to his kids and he losing his best friend in his wife due to a divorce serves him right for sleeping with a beautiful but messed up woman such as Kathy. I think what binds these two characters together aside from sexual chemistry is that they are emotionally messed up and thus their general F-ness is what binds them together. Also, they are bound by the fact that they both want to start fresh with their lives. For Kathy, she wants to forget her past f--ups and for Lester he wants to feel alive again.

After reading Part 1, one feels as if this the way both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict feels like. Even they connect with each other humanity and thus hope for peace is strongly present, nevertheless escalation in violence from both sides seems that the conflict will have a cataclysmic ending. In the book, the colonel represents the Israeli reasonable given the circumstances but draconian measures and Kathy represents the Palestinian peoples careening out of control. The US in this case is the reader in that we can sympathize with the others humanity but as soon as one side escalates we immediately lose sympathy for that side.

Part 2 is where the book dramatically gets interesting.

I like how Part 2 starts with Lester's thoughts and his life. From this section, we find out Lester grew up as a white minority in a Latino barrio and thus was constantly picked on. Although he did not want to fight, he was forced to defend himself and almost always lose in that fight. Growing up in these circumstances, he always had a yearning to fight injustice of the strong taking advantage of the weak. This in turn leads him to become a police officer who increasingly took battered wives and people beating others up personally. Aside from wanting to be the protector of the weak, Lester still identifies himself as weak and thus has something to prove to those who are "stronger than him". This fear inside him of being weak combined with the innate desire to help the weak among us leads him to try to prove himself to Kathy by being her protector and hurting the Colonel. The problem with this is too much passion for a cause combined with an act of violence is always a bad thing because one cannot stop oneself when one starts going. Also since Lester is acting in the position of weakness, he is absolutely dangerous because his actions are divorced from his motives. That is, in the position of weakness a man simply reacts because he does not know what else to do. Lester also has lost his desire to live his life and thus wants to shake out of that desire by doing something that makes him feel strong that is a proactive stance. But since innately he is coming from a position of weakness, the proactive stance of sleeping with Kathy and brandishing an armed weapon towards the Iranian family is actually a weak mans action to appear strong.

In relation to Lester's marriage with Carol, Lester actually fell in love with her because of the passion that Carol showed in the causes that she was championing. In the passion for a cause, Lester felt that he had someone who understood him. Once they had a family, Carol stopped pursuing those causes and thus the passion left her and subsequently the passion in their marriage left as well. From that moment on, Lester just felt like she was friends with Carol nothing more. I still think it is his fault that he now lacks passion in their marriage. All he has to do is encourage his wife to follow what she is passionate about in order to get her to have passion in her life again and subsequently passion in their marriage.