House of Sand and Fog

I really need to hit the book store, I'm completely out of anything to read. I grabbed the novel "House of Sand and Fog," from my bookshelf at home to read this week at work. It's literally the only thing I had left to read. The novel is written by Andre Dubus III and was adapted into a movie around 2000. Yet another book to movie I never saw. From the back cover of the book:

"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."

This novel is utterly depressing, in fact after I write this review I might go hang myself in the bathroom. The story is basically about two immovable forces that collide in a tragic conclusion either due to pride, greed, or the inability to understand one another. While I generally liked the story and the opposing view points of the two main characters through chapters written from the first person perspective of both, I did find the narrative overall a little sluggish and long. I kept wanting to reach a conclusion which is never a good sign when reading. Another warning sign while reading was my inability to have much empathy for any of the characters, in fact there were times that I really disliked them, maybe that was the point.

Overall not a bad read that I would recommend, just don't listen to all the hype. The story moved slowly for me and concluded miserably.