House of sand and fog. (A. Dubus)

Andre Dubus (1999) House of Sand and Fog.

W. W. Norton & Co.

Summary
Kathy Lazaro is a young recovering alcoholic recently separated from her husband. Her family home is repossessed and sold at auction to Behrani, a former Iranian Air Force officer, for whom it represents his own version of the American dream - an entry to real estate and a passport to the future for his family. Kathy is destitute and the sale of her home is it is the last of a series of insults that life has dealt her.


My comments
I enjoyed this book a lot. The three main characters (Kathy, Behrani and the policeman - Lester Burdon) were credible and developed over the book and Behrani's 'voice' gave us insights into an otherwise enigmatic man.

I liked especially the ways that the characters moved relentlessly towards the tragic conclusion through a series of decisions and actions that, on the face of it, were more-or-less rational and sensible. None of them was a victim; each was (more or less) in charge of their own fate and yet something seemed to drag them into a vortex from which they could never escape - and they didn't.


1. Andre Dubus III has a Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Dubus_III
(Don't confuse this with the Wikipedia entry for his father - Andre Dubus!)

House of Sand and Fog. has its own Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Sand_and_Fog_(novel)
It also has a page on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club web site:
www.oprah.com/article/oprahsbookclub/obc_20001116_aboutbook/1

2. Andre Dubus was interviewed by Larry Weissman for salon.com following the publication of House of Sand and Fog:
www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0300/dubus/interview.html
He was interviewed (at length) by Robert Birnbaum for identitytheory.com:
www.identitytheory.com/people/birnbaum3.html

3. Other books by Andre Dubus
The Cage Keeper and Other Stories (1989) Vintage Books
Bluesman (1993) Vintage Books
The Garden of Last Days (2008) W. W. Norton & Co.

4. Andre Dubus's publishers
Vintage Books. Owned by Random House, the world's largest English-language general bookseller. Random House imprints include Bantam Books, BBC Books (BBC minor shareholder), Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Doubleday, William Heinemann, Hutchinson, Knopf, Pantheon, Schocken, Secker & Warburg. In turn, Random House is owned by German multinational Bertelsmann AG, whose subsidiaries include the RTL Group, owner of 45 television and 32 radio stations in 11 countries in Europe.
W. W. Norton & Co. Describes itself as, 'the oldest and largest publishing house owned wholly by its employees'. Based in New York, with agencies overseas.