Review: House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

Title: House of Sand and Fog

Author: Andre Dubus III

Pages: 365

Source: Personal library

Rating: 5/10

Summary (From back of 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 Nicolo is a troubled young woman 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 doomed by their tragic inability to understand one another, the three converge in an explosive collision course.

My Two Cents:

Even though I felt compelled to read this book, even staying up late to read a good chunk of it, I can't say I enjoyed it. I think I really just wanted to know what happened at the end, to see how everything played out.

A lot of my issue with the book was that two of the characters, Kathy and Lester, just made me so mad. I could not find any single shred of sympathy for either of them. I thought they both were terrible, reckless people and reading their sections of the book found me rolling my eyes on nearly every page. I don't know why I hated them so much, but I did. Ugh.

I think another part of my problem with the book was that I only felt any sympathy for Behrani. He not only was truly the one who did no wrong in the whole situation (Yes, you can argue he could have given the house back, but why should he have to pay for someone else's mistake?), but the whole action of the book just comes crashing in on his family. I spent the last 100 or so pages just so mad and sick that, had my desire to find out not won, I would have put the book down. It just angered me something fierce.

Now, I'm no prude, but I also took a lot of issue with the amount and description of the sex in this book. Do I know it happens? Yes. Do I know it's not always as chaste and pure as the driven snow? Uh, yeah. But I don't need to read about it every 30 or so pages. In detail. There are just so many other things that could have been done in those spaces, in my opinion.

Review: The Body Artist by Don Delillo

Title: The Body Artist

Author: Don Delillo

Pages: 124

Source: Personal library

Rating: 5/10

Summary (From book flap):

In this spare, seductive novel, he inhabits the muted world of Lauren Hartke, an artist whose work defies the limits of the body. Lauren is living on a lonely coast, in a rambling rented house, where she encounters a strange, ageless man, a man with uncanny knowledge of her own life. Together they begin a journey into the wilderness of time -- time, love and human perception.

My Two Cents:

I just need to learn to stay away from Don Delillo's books. I read White Noise in college and thought it was fabulous. So, I gave Underworld a try. I barely made it through that huge tome, and all I remember about it is that it was about baseball. I figured, though, that maybe that was a fluke of a book and I didn't take to it since I dislike baseball so much. That led me to giving The Body Artist a try.

I had the same issue with this book that I had with Franny and Zooey: Nothing happens. I know this is like the hallmark of all those esoteric modern novels that hipsters worship, but it just doesn't work for me. I found myself, even in just 124 pages, spacing out and wishing for it to be over. I know this sounds harsh, but there just wasn't much about this book that I liked.

The one saving grace of this novel is Delillo's writing. He certainly is one of the great craftsman of the English language currently alive. His sentences are varied and complex, and he has a knack for turning a phrase. But, really, that's about all I found to like about this book.