The Lay of the Land (Signed First Edition)

Richard Ford

ISBN 10: 0679454683 / ISBN 13: 9780679454687

Published by Knopf, New York, 2006

About this Item

First edition. First printing. Signed by author on title page (his name only, without any other writing). A mint unread copy, opened only for signing. The third volume of Ford's Sportswriter saga, an American classic. Chosen as one of the Top Five Fiction Books of 2006, by the New York Times Book Review; one of the top ten books of the year by TIME Magazine. With mylar dust jacket protector. Defect-free, smoke-free. Shipped in sturdy box. You cannot find a better copy.

Seller Inventory # tc1006-5

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Lay of the Land (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679454683
• ISBN 13: 9780679454687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

With The Sportswriter, in 1986, Richard Ford commenced a cycle of novels that ten years later—after Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award—was hailed by The Times of London as “an extraordinary epic [that] is nothing less than the story of the twentieth century itself.” Now, a decade later, Frank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate), more acutely in thrall to life’s endless complexities than ever before.

His story resumes in the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving, permitting him to revel in the acceptance of “that long, stretching-out time when my dreams would have mystery like any ordinary person’s; when whatever I do or say, who I marry, how my kids turn out, becomes what the world—if it makes note at all—knows of me, how I’m seen, understood, even how I think of myself before whatever there is that’s wild and unassuagable rises and cheerlessly hauls me off to oblivion.” But as a Presidential election hangs in the balance, and a postnuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him along with crises both marital and medical, Frank discovers that what he terms the Permanent Period is fraught with unforeseen perils: “All the ways that life feels like life at age fifty-five were strewn around me like poppies.”

A holiday, and a novel, no reader will ever forget—at once hilarious, harrowing, surprising, and profound. The Lay of the Land is astonishing in its own right and a magnificent expansion of one of the most celebrated chronicles of our time.

About the Author

The author of five previous novels and three collections of short fiction, Richard Ford’s honours also include the PEN/Malamud Award. He lives in Maine and New Orleans.