Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III

The Story: There’s a lot going on here, so I’m going to just keep it simple.

Kathy lives in this house with her boyfriend who is kind of a jerk.  He leaves her and all she really has is this house.  Also she sucks at checking her mail.

Because of a screw up by the government, Kathy’s house gets put up for auction.

Colonel Behrani is an Iranian immigrant who is looking to make life for him, his wife and his son better now that they are in America.  When Kathy’s house goes up for auction, he buys it in what he sees as a perfectly fair deal.

The police officer who goes to Kathy’s house to boot her out is Lester.  He quickly falls for Kathy and becomes a little obsessed in justice being served in this case.

Craziness ensues.

What I Thought: I’m just going to say right off the bat that I loved this book.

It’s not exactly gush-worthy, but I really can’t think of anything negative to even say.

I thought that this was just so well thought out.  Rarely does a writer write a book that shows both sides of an issue so well.  As I read, I found my alliance shifting over and over.  I wanted Kathy to get her house back: it was hers, it was all she had, it wasn’t her fault it got put up for auction.  I also wanted Behrani to get to keep his house:  he paid for it fair and square, he saved up all this money and had big plans for the house.  It was almost impossible for me to want either side to “lose.”  That’s just plain old good writing.  I felt a level of compassion towards these characters that I rarely feel towards fictional characters and even forgot from time to time that they weren’t real.

I felt like this was one of those books that starts slow and lets the momentum build and build until by the last few pages, you are on the edge of your seat.  The pacing was great.  You knew the whole time that something big was going to go down and that this whole thing wasn’t going to be solved in court.  Watching all these players hurdle towards this intense ending was pretty incredible.

The fact that this was in Oprah’s Book Club kept me from reading it for a long time, because apparently me and Oprah have different tastes in books usually, but this was a case where she was right on.  Seriously good stuff.

I’ve heard that this is a pretty great movie too, but I haven’t been able to stay awake through a whole movie in over a year, so chances are I won’t even give it a go. Has anyone seen it? Will I enjoy the first 25 minutes before I conk out and let Shaun watch the rest?

Conclusion: Read this.  Just read it.