About the Book
In his trio of bestselling novels – The Sportswriter, Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner-winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land – Richard Ford set out the zeitgeist of an entire generation, through the divining and wit of his now-famous literary chronicler, Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible, provocative and anticipated characters in modern American literature.
In Let Me Be Frank With You, Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived – seemingly but not utterly – amidst the devastations of Hurricane Sandy. The desolations of Sandy, which left houses, shorelines and countless lives unmoored and flattened, are the perfect backdrop and touchstone for Ford – and Bascombe. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle – the tumult of the world we live in.
Through Bascombe – funny, profane, touching, wise, often inappropriate – we share the aspirations and sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of American life in the morning of the new century. With his trademark candour and brimming wit, Richard Ford brings Bascombe back in all his imperfect glory to say (often hilariously) what all of us are thinking but few will voice aloud.
About the Author :
Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944. He has published seven novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and, most recently, the New York Times bestseller, Canada. His novel, Independence Day, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes. He lives in Maine, with his wife, Kristina Ford.
Review :
Frank is Ford’s Everyman, a disenchanted, rueful and humorous witness to his country’s faltering resolve at the close of the American century and the opening of a new and newly menacing millennium … Late style, in Ford, is loose-limbed, allusive, jokey in a rueful way, and mutedly elegiac … The delicacy with which Frank passes over the sad awkwardness of the moments shows just what a marvellous writer Ford is
The overarching theme of all Ford’s novels has been the gap between the fixed characters we construct for ourselves and present to the world and the unfixed, uncalculable selves that actually govern our actions … As ever, the droll, lyrical punch of Frank’s voice provides a great part of the appeal. Latinate words jostle with slang and profanity. Mock-heroic Southern verbosity sits alongside insightful cultural analysis. By nature solitary (‘friendship is over-rated’), Frank is in fact great company, and his deadpan wit and existential search for the right action and ultimate truths make him, for all his flaws, intensely likeable … Although Frank insists to us once more that his literary talents are measly, reading his hilarious, ever-inventive narration, we are bound to disagree
The enjoyment of reading Richard Ford is not about decommissioning, it is about the exquisite pleasure of acquisition of language (larruping, galunker, copacetic) … As you read Richard Ford, the harder you look, the sadder and funnier it gets. And by the way, in case you did not know, copacetic means excellent which is what this book is
Frank’s subtle take on modern times, his resigned attitude to aging, acceptance of the way things have panned out and enjoyment of life’s minor daily compensations are profoundly moving and often very funny, too. Another seemingly effortless Ford masterpiece
Ford uses direct, but aphoristic and rhythmic prose – sentences often long and sinuous – to describe the world around Bascombe and his in-terror emotional state … It’s a true delight to hear Bascombe’s voice again, his acute, if sometimes unpalatable, observations; his oddly homespun vocabulary … This is a work of understated power, intelligence and not a little mischief, but one that leaves one wanting – craving – more
Let Me Be Frank With You is a beautifully composed, deceptively ramshackle, novel. Ford is renowned for taking his trusty sidearm and blasting away at bad reviews. Few potshots will be required for this one. Roll on number five – after all, Richard Ford’s only 70 and ¾
Richard Ford had announced that he would not write any more Frank Bascombe, protagonist of The Sportswriter and two further novels, and possibly the most admired Everyman of the late-20th-century US fiction. But some heroes are too good to abandon for ever (as Conan Doyle and others found), and now Bascombe is back, to the probable pleasure of all who enjoy his chewy observational style
The incomparable Mississippian Richard Ford is a great writer, no question about that. More importantly, he is a great American writer. Throughout his novels and short stories, as well as his astute critical reading of literature, he has fulfilled the main objective of art: the exploration of the self. He has also consistently chiselled away, ever closer to the heart of the United States … He is a writer who has nailed exactly what it is to be alive – no mean feat – and to be alive in the US
His journalistic eye for the revealing detail, his knack for tracing the connections between the public and the personal, his gift for capturing the precariousness of daily life
The appeal of the Bascombe books is both simple and elusive. They are written in a fresh, graceful accessible voice – apparently that of an American everyman offering full disclosure and homespun wisdom, with all the literary chicanery stripped way. Upon close inspection, however, Frank is revealed as mercurial, fairly evasive and anything but typical: an existentialist renegade taking refuge in the persona of an ordinary suburban guy … Ford provides a bravura account of the hurricane’s devastation, in the supple, thickly detailed Bascombe prose, shifting effortlessly from lyrical to vulgar in a sentence
Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels: emotional depth combined with the consoling pleasures of the quotidian
Richard Ford’s character Frank Bascombe is a classic creation of our times and Let Me Be Frank With You may be the most overtly humorous of the Bascombe series while touching on the big issues of the day with intelligence and insight. Beautifully crafted and entirely accessible literature
