Shopping For House of Sand and Fog (Oprah's Book Club) (Vintage Contemporaries) Discounts - Bargain House of Sand and Fog (Oprah's Book Club) (Vintage Contemporaries)

Compare Prices:
$9.30	Buy at Buy.com	(Lowest New Price)
$9.76	Buy at Walmart
$10.07	Buy at Overstock
$10.49	Buy at eCampus
$10.99	Buy at BestPrices.com
Track Prices via RSS:
+XML +My Yahoo +My MSN +Rojo +Newsgator +Bloglines +Pluck

This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375727344
Edition: Trade
ISBN: 0375727345
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 365
Publication Date: March 01, 2000
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: November 16, 2000
Studio: Vintage

Alternate Versions: Click to Display

Related Items:

Browse for similar items by category:

Books > Specialty Stores > Custom Stores > Book Clubs > Literature & Fiction > Popular Fiction
Books > Specialty Stores > Custom Stores > Qualifying Textbooks > General AAS
Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( D ) > Dubus, Andre III
Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary
Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Literary

Editorial Review:

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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- a tragedy that dribbled away to inconsequence
Dubus came up with an unusual and intriguing premise for his novel: A bureaucratic error over the ownership of a house in down-market (!) San Francisco that leads to its being contested by two protagonists. The house's newest "owner" is a dignity-hewing, appearance-maintaining former colonel in the Shah of Iran's (since deposed) air force groping for the first rung on the ladder of the American dream. His place in the narrative is enriched by his Persian family relationships: his wife Nadi and 14 ... Read More

Rating:

- a brave attempt at reading the immigrant psyche
I loved the book.
Did drag for the last 75 pages and then picked up again.
Dumas touches the immigrant psyche: and I appreciate that.You come to new culture but it takes a while for you to grow roots. In the meanwhile, you 'live out of suitcase'. You don't really belong to a specfic place but the US is your 'home'. Its hard to define, but a lot of the educated immigrants who arrive here are already living the US way of life; we work hard, pay our taxes,educate out children, live a clean ... Read More

Rating:

- Apathy.
The story is told primarily from two different people's points of view. I am not sure if the author intended the readers to feel any sympathy towards the characters in their predicaments, but I found all of them to be pretty despicable, and I thought they all probably deserve what's coming to them. At times I subconsciously root for one character or the next, but both of the main characters are greedy and selfish. Kathy is a screw up and incompetent which leads to all the trouble she gets in. Behrani ... Read More

Rating:

- Flawed Characters
Structurally, the book was interesting. Several characters narrate the book, and the plot unfolds around a central issue--who owns a particular house. Who can live in the house? Who can sell the house? But, the major problem is that the characters are difficult to identify with or find sympathy for. All three of the central characters--Kathy Nicolo, Lester Burdon, and Colonel Behrani--remain the same. They are never changed by incredible circumstances--death, murder, suicide, inprisonment--they remain ... Read More

Rating:

- * NOT For KIDS !!! *
I gave this book 1 star, only because the review requires at least 1 star. This book was given to my 14 year old son to read for a High Honors required summer reading program. He read through the first 2 chapters and handed the book to me and said he wasn't going to read it. My husband and I then read the book and discovered extreme graphic sexual content, not just once, but, many, many times! The description of the sexual content is not done in a metaphorical way, it is exremeley graphic! I'm totally disgusted ... Read More

| Mall Directory Front Page | Shopper Favorites Web Search |

View Shopping Cart or Checkout

MALL.ShopperFavorites.com