House of Sand and Fog By Andre Dubus III is an Oprah Winfrey Book Club Selection in 2000 and a National Book Award Finalist in 1999. There are plenty of descriptions, reviews, and analysis from this time frame, so I'm not even going to try to provide a decent introduction here.
Started: November 22, 2009
Completed: November 24, 2009
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Picked this up at a yard sale. I had no real knowledge of it, but the back caught my attention. I read the first few paragraphs and found the approach interesting. There was a note about the National Book Award on the front, but I didn't know about Oprah until I started writing this review.
Review: The book is well written and the change of perspectives are very well done. That having been said...the plot just sucks. The events that are described are awful. Now, some people like that but I don't. This book doesn't have a happy ending and there is no "message" being sent. There is an argument to be made that this is a character study, but I don't see the characters being developed as the book progresses (the time frame is much too short to allow that). At best, this strikes me as a modern tragedy (in the Greek sense). Fundamental flaws in each character are exploited by the plot line and run, arguably, to their logical conclusion. The result is a sad, sad book where everyone makes reasonable decisions within their own selfish point of view but no one is made better by the book. There is a meager effort to look at what is "right" or even altruistic but the very mildness of the approach suggests that this is not a course to be pursued, but a character flaw in itself. I found the book very dissatisfying.
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