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A short story collection that works to create one (not-too-obvious) whole. The connections within the stories and between them are just right.
I came around to it. A bit clever, but then I decided the cleverness is fresh — "Sally went to see Ann once in October, before the hurricane. I feared an odorless, colorless bond would form between them — against me." And you don't mind for the warmth and empathy that's there.
A little bit David Mitchell in Black Swan Green:
"An encounter with him would zero out my Default Self before it even had its chance."
"The inspector crows had disappeared."
A little bit David Mitchell in Black Swan Green:
"An encounter with him would zero out my Default Self before it even had its chance."
"The inspector crows had disappeared."
Not quite as good as his other books, so it's more like a 3.5, but very good nonetheless.
Meh. I loved The Sportswriter and Independence Day, but man am I tired of upper middle class, narcissistic white dudes and their feelings. No more Frank Bascombe for me, I'm afraid.
This is the fourth book relating to the life of this character, Frank Bascombe. My favorite still remains the first one, The Sportswriter, but that may just be due to the circumstances of my own life. Most people seem to like the second one, Independence Day best, and it won all the awards.
In any event, this book, unlike the others, is not a novel. It is supposedly a set of interconnected short stories. To me, they weren't as interconnected as the marketing suggested. However, they were all interesting stories and well written. Overall, I yearned for more than these four short glimpses in Frank's life, but I was glad to get a little more time with him.
In any event, this book, unlike the others, is not a novel. It is supposedly a set of interconnected short stories. To me, they weren't as interconnected as the marketing suggested. However, they were all interesting stories and well written. Overall, I yearned for more than these four short glimpses in Frank's life, but I was glad to get a little more time with him.
Sentimientos dispares en nuestra lectura común. Hay quien ha disfrutado mucho y hay quienes no. Yo soy de las segundas. Me ha costado mucho entrar en el mundo de Frank.
I really, really liked this. Not as stories, but as reflections on some difficult topics that become more apparent as you age.
Current and previous relationships. The racism you unreflectedly engage in. Loss, responsibility for other people and their losses, escape from danger.
If you like new pictures of these topics - not so much new ideas, as new materialisations, this is a book for you.
Current and previous relationships. The racism you unreflectedly engage in. Loss, responsibility for other people and their losses, escape from danger.
If you like new pictures of these topics - not so much new ideas, as new materialisations, this is a book for you.
I just wish it were longer. Actually, the lower density lets the charm and emotion seep through. This is broken into four separate stories, and in each Frank serves as sort of a witness to someone else's story, while still keeping it his own.
I like Richard Ford's writing. I like the way he reminds me that the world is just people trying to muddle through, doing their best and occasionally getting it wrong. I like that I recognise myself in the women in his books. I like his character Frank Bascombe. I like the way Ford writes him, and the way I get an insight into how the male mind works, and how men see women. Men like Frank, anyway, who is a man like my father, my brother, a little bit my husband. This time around, though, Frank makes me uncomfortable. I don't remember him being so plainly racist in the other books. The way he describes Charlotte Pines, his attitude to the Mexican and Chinese people who live in his town, dressed up in the bluff of telling it how it is that seems a universal characteristic of people over a certain age, makes me want to look away. He is, or Ford is, acknowledging the conflict he feels as a white man speaking to a person who doesn't share his ethnic background, who isn't racist but is keen to prove himself not racist and so ends up being racist. Unlike Fawlty Towers' 'Don't mention the war', this doesn't make me laugh. It makes me cringe.
There's also the habit Ford has of making Frank tell us things more than once. It doesn't always come off as a trope, as a nod to people getting older and forgetting what they've said and to whom. At times it seems as though Ford has forgotten what he'd written already just a few pages before, or as though a bad editing job has been done on the book. Some passages read like plot development notes that Ford forgot to delete.
But still, I like Frank and, despite its minor faults and awkwardnesses, the slight feeling of disappointment it gave me for not living up to my expectation, the book is still an engaging read.
There's also the habit Ford has of making Frank tell us things more than once. It doesn't always come off as a trope, as a nod to people getting older and forgetting what they've said and to whom. At times it seems as though Ford has forgotten what he'd written already just a few pages before, or as though a bad editing job has been done on the book. Some passages read like plot development notes that Ford forgot to delete.
But still, I like Frank and, despite its minor faults and awkwardnesses, the slight feeling of disappointment it gave me for not living up to my expectation, the book is still an engaging read.
This is a book in the Frank Bascombe series. This is the first book I've read from that series. I don't know if I would've enjoyed it more if I had read the other ones. Probably not if they were all like this. Nothing really happened in the book. It was just a slice of life. There were pieces of dialogue and paragraphs that were there to explain that the point of the book (and maybe the series) was that nothing was really supposed to happen.