This novel is a brilliant explication of what can happen when two desperate people's lives collide and become entwined. Dubus introduces us to two characters who couldn't be more at odds - Kathy Niccolo, a Saugus, MA native who has moved to California to escape shades of her drug-addled, under-achieving past, and Massoud Behrani, a hardworking, regimented ex-Colonel who fled Iran after a political uprising, who is struggling to maintain a semblance of dignity in a country that has little opportunity for certain immigrants. What brings these two together is the ownership rights to a small bungalow in Northern California. Dubus' pacing is impressive; with each page one reads, the tension and desperation of each character's lives creep into the reader's consciousness. These aren't necessarily likable characters - but what Dubus succeeds in doing is creating such a believable, involved psychological portrait of these two people, that pretty early on, the novel becomes a page-turner. It's very easy to get engaged in this book - so much so, it serves as a great subway read. The writing is somewhat straightforward, with minimal literary flourishes, but the strong story and intense psychological portraits make up for any lack in beautiful writing.

We're all familiar with tragedies, aren't we? Most of us learned about them in school, through Shakespeare - possibly first with (my favourite) Macbeth. A guy with out of control ambition does unthinkable things to good people and the world swirls in demonic confusion until he is brought to his knees and destroyed. Damn. That gets my blood going.

But what about if people aren't bad. If they have no bad intentions? If they're just living their (tough) lives, guilty only of putting one foot in front of the other, of wanting what is rightfully theirs, of protecting those that they love?

House of Sand and Fog is a spectacular tragedy - I'm telling you, no one walks out of this unscathed, and orders a cafe latte at Starbucks at the end. But there's no villain here, no one to hate. There is Colonel Behrani, a Persian immigrant who is diminished every day by shame, picking up garbage at the side of the road during the day, working at a convenience store by night. There is Kathy Nicolo, a recovered alcoholic whose husband has deserted her, who cleans houses and holds on to her sobriety each day. A house comes between them. Neither has done anything "wrong". But somehow, wrong after wrong after wrong occurs, sliding good people into a nightmare they can't wake from.

It's probably the holding on to the idea of "right" and "wrong" that proves most dangerous in this book. Sticking to one's story instead of backing away, or looking from the other person's point of view. Dubus allows the reader this luxury, by offering multiple points of view, and thus shows that there are no monsters in this book, only bad decisions. Bad decisions which pile on top of each other, in the end creating a stranglehold of tension and an inevitable, complete, crash.

There are no witches cackling over a cauldron in this tragedy. But I loved it anyway.

I read this years ago, just adding it to my shelf now. I am not counting this in my 2019 Goodreads Challenge