Let Me Be Frank With You : A Frank Bascombe Book
Author(s): Richard Ford
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
A brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the hallowed territory that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe, and the landscape of his celebrated novels The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land.
In his trio of world-acclaimed novels portraying the life of an entire American generation, Richard Ford has imagined one of the most indelible and widely discussed characters in modern literature, Frank Bascombe. Through Bascombe—protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate—we’ve witnessed the aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century.
Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity. It is a moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment. Ford is here again working with the maturity and brilliance of a writer at the absolute height of his powers.
Review(s):
“Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land, continues to reflect on the meaning of existence in these four absorbing, funny, and often profound novellas.”
“Ford is celebrated for his Frank Bascombe novels--stories swirling around the life of a middle-aged real estate agent. His profession lends itself to Ford’s rich descriptions of natural land. Here, Ford places Bascombe in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.”
“The American master returns with another dispatch from Frank Bascombe.”
“Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land, continues to reflect on the meaning of existence in these four absorbing, funny, and often profound novellas...Readers who met Frank in Ford’s earlier novels will quickly reconnect with his indelible personality.”
“… caustically hilarious, warmly philosophical, and emotionally lush… In each neatly linked tale, Frank ruminates misanthropically, wittily, and wisely about love, family, friendship, race, politics, and the mystery of the self…Like Frank, Ford, certainly is incisively frank, forensically observant, and covertly tender.”
“Bascombe is a little grumpier than before but no less introspective...As in the previous books, his fast-running internal commentary on those neighbors...is the book’s engine, streaming along, carrying us from one scene to the next and binding them all together.”
“In his Frank Bascombe novels--The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land--Richard Ford bares the male psyche at various ages. Bascombe is retired now, and let’s just say: Life’s leading to one inevitable place. As ever, his ruminations offer insight.”
“Deeply elegiac tales… A notable addition--and perhaps coda--to Ford’s ‘Frank Bascombe’ trilogy; highly recommended.”
“The Pulizer Prize-winner ricochets off his ‘Frank Bascombe Trilogy’ of novels (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land) with four themed stories told by Bascombe, his insightful, funny and irreverent main character now living in New Jersey.”
“Bascombe himself is still alive at the end of Let Me Be Frank With You. If he and we can defer the call of mortality, we can only hope to meet him again in 10 years’ time.”
ISBN: 9780061692062