After the disintegration of his family, the ruin of his career and an affair with a much younger woman, Frank Bascombe decides that the surest route to a normal American life is to become an estate agent in Haddam, New Jersey. Frank blunders through the suburban citadels of the Eastern Seaboard and avoids engaging in life until the sudden, cataclysmic events of a Fourth of July weekend with his son jolt him back.
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Review:
Another title for Ford's 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel might be "The Return of Frank Bascombe." Bascombe, in this sequel to Ford's 10-year-old The Sportswriter, comes close to taking his place with John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom in the pantheon of confused white middle-class American literary protagonists. At age 44 he has entered what Bascombe calls "the Existence Period, the high-wire act of normalcy, the part that comes after the big struggle which led to the big blowup." Bascombe's almost comic indecisiveness has led to the breakup of his marriage, a detached, wary affair, and an achingly fragile relationship with his troubled teenage son, Paul. Ford details Bascombe's Fourth of July weekend in leisurely, measured prose, crafting scenes of muted heartbreak.
From the Back Cover:
"An extraordinary epic.... nothing less than the story of the twentieth century itself." — The Times
"Frank Bascombe has earned a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape...with a wry wit and a fin de sihcle wisdom that is very much his own." — The New York Times Book Review
"Each flash of magical dialogue, every rumination a wild surprise.... Independence Day is a confirmation of a talent as strong and varied as American fiction has to offer." — The New York Review of Books
"A Babe Ruth of novelists.... One of the finest curators of the great American living museum." — Washington Post Book World
"One of his generation's most eloquent voices." — Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVintage Books
- Publication date1996
- ISBN 10 0099447126
- ISBN 13 9780099447122
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages464
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Rating