Let Me Be Frank With You - Hardcover

“Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land, continues to reflect on the meaning of existence in these four absorbing, funny, and often profound novellas.” (Publishers Weekly)

“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)

“Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land, continues to reflect on the meaning of existence in these four absorbing, funny, and often profound novellas...Readers who met Frank in Ford’s earlier novels will quickly reconnect with his indelible personality.” (Publishers Weekly)

“... caustically hilarious, warmly philosophical, and emotionally lush... In each neatly linked tale, Frank ruminates misanthropically, wittily, and wisely about love, family, friendship, race, politics, and the mystery of the self...Like Frank, Ford, certainly is incisively frank, forensically observant, and covertly tender.” (Booklist (starred review))

“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)

“Deeply elegiac tales... A notable addition--and perhaps coda--to Ford’s ‘Frank Bascombe’ trilogy; highly recommended.” (Library Journal (starred review))

“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)

A brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the celebrated fictional landscape that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe

In his trio of critically acclaimed, bestselling novels—The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/ Faulkner-winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land—Richard Ford, in essence, illuminated the zeitgeist of an entire generation, through the divinings and wit of his now-famous literary chronicler, Frank Bascombe, who is certainly one of the most indelible, provocative, and anticipated characters in modern American literature.

Here, in Let Me Be Frank With You, Ford returns with four deftly linked stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, and again ensconced in the well-defended New Jersey suburb of Haddam, Bascombe has thrived—seemingly if not utterly—in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation. As in all of the Bascombe books, Ford's guiding spirit is the old comic's maxim that promises if nothing's funny, nothing's truly serious. The desolation of Sandy, which rendered houses, shorelines, and countless lives unmoored and flattened, could scarcely be more serious as the grist for fiction. Yet it is 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 American subjects: aging, race, loss, faith, marriage, redemption, the real-estate crash—the tumult of the world we live in.

Through Bascombe—wry, profane, touching, wise, and often inappropriate—we engage in the aspirations and sorrows, longings, achievements, and failings of American life in the morning of the new century. With his trademark candor and brimming wit, Richard Ford brings Bascombe fully back, in all his imperfect glory, to say (often hilariously) what all of us are thinking but few will voice aloud.

Whether you've been a Bascombe insider since The Sportswriter or are encountering Ford's unforgettable inventions newly here, Let Me Be Frank With You is a moving, wondrous, extremely funny odyssey, showcasing the maturity and brilliance of a great writer working at the top of his talents.