Let Me Be Frank with You (Frank Bascombe) - Hardcover

Ford, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061692069 ISBN 13: 9780061692062

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2014

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"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."--Huffington Post, Best Books for Fall 2014

"The American master returns with another dispatch from Frank Bascombe."--San Antonio Express-News

"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."--Town & Country

"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."--AARP, Editor's Picks

"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."--Sacramento Bee

"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."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Frank has reached his twilight years with his trademark wit and ruminative self-awareness intact, even if his body is starting to slide into geriatric betrayal...There's no doubt that this is the same old Frank.."Grade: B+--Entertainment Weekly

"Incredibly, Ford maintains, over 30 years, Frank's voice-he sounds much as he did when he was 38, except he is a little more prone to pontificating... This is what gripped readers on the first page of The Sportswriter...and what continues in Let Me Be Frank With You."--Chicago Tribune

"The fact that Let Me works as well as it does is a testament to Mr. Ford's strengths as a writer and his ability to turn his hero's contradictions and discontinuities into something more like the genuine complexities of a real human being."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Of all the serial heroes bustling through postwar American fiction, Frank Bascombe makes the strongest claim on our affection... It is Mr. Ford's achievement to have made the musings of this suburban everyman captivating."--Wall Street Journal

Book Description:

Richard Ford returns to the territory that sealed his reputation as a master: the world of Frank Bascombe

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0061692069
• ISBN 13: 9780061692062
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256