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Up the Creek Book Club


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House of Sand and Fog

by Andre Dubus

September 2000

Synopsis

House of Sand and Fog"On a road crew in California, a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force under the Shah yearns to restore his family's dignity. When an attractive bungalow comes available on county auction for a fraction of its value, he sees a great opportunity for himself, his wife and children. But the house's former owner, a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck, doesn't see it that way, nor does her lover, a married cop driven to extremes to win her love and get her house back. These are people with ordinary flaws, people just looking for a small piece of ground to stand on, driven by the same needs into inevitable conflict - a conflict in which even the reader, rooting for all of them, has no safe haven. 'House of Sand and Fog' turns both the traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story upside down with a heartening outcome, in a masterstroke of American realism and Shakespearean consequence." (Publisher)

Reviews

  • "[E]xamines what happens when ordinary men and women move across the tenuous barrier between the normal and the irrational....a story...about how people...are repeatedly trapped by circumstances and transformed..." (Bill Sharp - The New York Times Book Review)
  • "Unputdownable...a page-turner that's a mind-opener...a thriller with moral complexity." (Mirabella)
  • "House of Sand and Fog is a novel of terrible truths. Everyone here wants what we want -- love, justice, a home -- and all their good intentions collide, violently, inevitably, in a story of remarkable power and veracity and tenderness. Andrew Dubus III has a keen and generous eye, and a great gift of bestowing dignity on even the most confused of his people. I cared for them all, and mourned their fates." (Author of A Man in Full - Tom Wolfe)

Book Club Rating and Comments

If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by Andre Dubus

  • 'Bluesman'
  • 'The Cage Keeper'