Independence Day: Bascombe Trilogy 2 (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

In some respects, "Independence Day" is the best book I've ever read. Richard Ford is simply brilliant at capturing the uncapturable.He is definitely the most skilled writer I've ever read when it comes to translating onto the page just what goes on in the human mind and heart as they struggle to cope with pain, loss, disappointment, and ultimately regeneration."Independence Day" is an interior monologue chronicling three days in the life of Frank Bascombe, former sportswriter turned realty agent, who is attempting to make some sort of real connection with his estranged teenage son. At the same time, Frank is struggling to be reborn from a self-imposed but seemingly inevitable cocoon of mid-life, post-divorce complacency, which he has termed "the existence period". Ford's perception and empathy are his greatest tools as a writer. There are brilliantly beautiful moments of emotional honesty in this book that resonate like the searing afterimage of sunlight glimpsed on a stretch of side-of-the-road evening rail.I cannot say enough good things about Richard Ford. I am in awe of him and would like to thank him for his wonderful contributions to my reading life. I highly recommend him to anyone who cares deeply about character and getting at what it means to be human. Ford once wrote, "If loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure." Nothing could be more true of this wonderful book.

Richard Ford has created in Frank Bascome the most interesting, insightful & thought provoking character in American literature since Holden Caufield. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend, Mr. Ford takes us on a journey that moves from the current day to flashbacks in the life of Frank Bascome. He is a real estate agent in a southern New Jersey town and one of his current clients is a couple who are looking for the ideal home. When Frank thinks he has found the right home, they have reservations. Frank never seems to be able to meet the couple's pie-in-the-sky expectations and that is central theme to the book. No matter how hard we try, we never seem to meet of own expectations in life. Frank has had a failed marriage, a failed career as a sportswriter and has entered what he calls an "existance period" in his life. He yearns for the days gone by when as he says "pride still mattered". Mr. Ford's perspectives on life in general are razor sharp and he balances the deepness of the story with the right amount of humor so the book doesn't become too heavy-handed. I recommend this book as highly as any book out there. If you liked "Catcher In The Rye", check this one out. You will not be disappointed.

This is a book that is fit to win the Nobel as well as the Pulitzer. I read it and heard it on tape and was mesmerized (Recorded Books, Inc. has it and the reader, Richard Poe, is brilliant). It made me feel wonderful - peaceful - that a great book could be written about a good, good man. It's funny, sweet, sad - Richard Ford has given me a gift and I thank him. I love that a lot of his "good intentions" go to hell, but that doesn't change his sense of humor or his basic love of life. His characters are priceless: the pathetic couple excited to buy a home in New Jersey only to find that they can't really afford it; Frank's hinky son; his kooky (and ungrateful) tenants. I love Frank Bascombe - hope there's going to be more about him - long may he wave.

In Independence Day, Richard Ford chronicles with consummate skill a few days in the life of a New Jersey sportswriter turned real estate agent, Frank Bascombe. With keen observations, outstanding descriptive power and dialogue more real than "The Real World," Ford pulls the strings of this great book masterfully. Frank is in the midst of what he calls "The Existence Period," a time when he has come to terms with his life to date and moved on to the more uncharted waters of vaguely contented middle-agedom. He has arrived at a crossroads where he has plenty of past but still a lot of future left ahead. The novel's narrative flows like life itself - forward, back, sideways - in a way that is so natural and consuming that you would swear the character is you and his thoughts are yours. There is not a book that I have read that does better justice to the realities of being human and adult in today's world. At its heart, Independence Day is the recording of two worlds- the one we sense through our bodies and the one that exists in our heads - and how these two interact in a way that is sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful, and most times just O.K. To read it is to see yourself, and in many ways, all of us. A must.