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isthar23's review
2.0
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.
renee_pompeii's review
2.0
I think if I were twenty years older I would better understand and probably love this book. It's for an older demographic, in terms of the subjects, humor, references and characters.
bookladyreads's review against another edition
I read this not realizing it was book four in a series. I'm going to reserve providing a review until I read the previous three books and then read this one again.
littlefemur's review
2.0
I'm wondering if I'd like Frank more if I had read the other books; I think not. I'm also wondering if The Sportswriter was a better book than this one since it won a Pulitzer, or if it's just a mediocre, white man thing. Some things in the book made me laugh but if you ask me what they were now, I wouldn't be able to tell you.
This book brought me back to the age-old question of: if I hate the main character, can I still appreciate the book? It didn't work here because even though it's good writing, the whole book centers on the thoughts of a boring, racist, misogynistic, and transphobic character. He calls black people Negroes and when there's a gender-ambiguous/transgender character, Frank refers to them as him/her, which made me physically cringe.
Overall, Frank is cynical and cruel, but somehow still boring and I was paying very little attention by the end of the book. No thanks
This book brought me back to the age-old question of: if I hate the main character, can I still appreciate the book? It didn't work here because even though it's good writing, the whole book centers on the thoughts of a boring, racist, misogynistic, and transphobic character. He calls black people Negroes and when there's a gender-ambiguous/transgender character, Frank refers to them as him/her, which made me physically cringe.
Overall, Frank is cynical and cruel, but somehow still boring and I was paying very little attention by the end of the book. No thanks
greggmpls's review
4.0
Nice short read about a retired Realtor living in New Jersey post hurricane, and coming to terms with the realities of middle-age.
p.s.
Did I offend you in some way, Mr. Ford? Next time you're in the area, stop in for a nice Tater Tot hotdish and we'll chat.
Sincerely,
Minnesota
p.s.
Did I offend you in some way, Mr. Ford? Next time you're in the area, stop in for a nice Tater Tot hotdish and we'll chat.
Sincerely,
Minnesota
marhill31's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 Stars
I’m a reading completist. I did not realize completist was a word until I typed this review. I felt it’s appropriate for my latest Wisdom From Kammbia review.
In 2015, I read and wrote a review for The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, the first Frank Bascombe novel. I wrote that I hated the protagonist and thought I would not read the rest of the books in the series.
“I must admit that Frank Bascombe was the most unlikable character I had read since Sarah Worth in John Updike’s novel S. Frank’s a cad and a callous human being to the people in his life. However, Ford’s strength as a writer keep me interested to see how Frank’s life would turn out.”
That paragraph was from my review of The Sportswriter and summed up my feelings about the novel. A year later, I picked up a copy of Independence Day, the second Frank Bascombe novel and read it. I could not put it down and reviewed that one too. It hooked me into the series with Independence Day and looked forward to reviewing The Lay of the Land, the third Frank Bascombe novel.
I had planned to stop after The Lay of the Land. However, I kept running across Let Me Be Frank With You over the past couple of years and even bought a copy or two only to donate them to the library.
Let me repeat….I’m a reading completist.
I went to the library a week ago and read the opening pages of Let Me Be Frank With You and I knew I would review it.
Let Me Be Frank With You is a collection link of four interlinked novellas that chronicles Frank Bascombe’s life as he reaches his late sixties. (The Sportswriter covered his thirties. Independence Day covered his forties. The Lay of the Land covered his fifties.) The stories take place after the devastation of what Hurricane Sandy did to the New Jersey coast. Bascombe reflects on his life and the damage those choices caused at this late stage in his life.
Frank is quite the observer of modern American life and has colorful opinions on politics (he’s liberal), race (born a Southerner and uses outdated terms for blacks as Negroes), religion (he’s not religious…but does not hate religious folk), and the libido (he thinks about sex often). I will admit his views on those various subjects made me dislike the character as a young man in The Sportswriter but now as a man nearing seventy in Let Me Be Frank With You, I have accepted and appreciated his candor about American culture. I know for some readers, Frank’s views about American culture would be a turnoff from reading the entire Frank Bascombe series. However, I believe Richard Ford has crafted one of great literary characters in modern American fiction and should be a must for readers of literary fiction.
In this collection, two of the four stories struck an emotional chord with me. The second novella, Everything Could Be Worse, is a story about an African American female history teacher—a stranger—who used to live in Frank’s house in Haddam shows up to reveal a startling bit of history about the house. Frank invites her to the home and during the conversation he learns a dark secret from the woman about what happened to her family in the home. It was one of the most powerful scenes I have ever read.
The last novella, Deaths of Others, is a story about Frank reluctantly visiting an old buddy, Eddie, who’s on his deathbed. Eddie lives in a mansion and cajoles Frank into visiting him. Frank agrees to visit and Eddie admits to an event that happened in Frank’s past and it felt like a gut-punch to the stomach. I have to admit that Eddie’s admission surprised as a reader and Frank’s reaction was not what I expected.
I’m glad and sad simultaneously that I have finished the Frank Bascombe books. Even though, I’m more of a fantasy reader, I appreciate this detour from my normal reading highway and can recognize it as one of the best book series I have ever read. Frank Bascombe is a literary descendant of John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom but has carved its own place in modern American fiction. Highly recommended.
I’m a reading completist. I did not realize completist was a word until I typed this review. I felt it’s appropriate for my latest Wisdom From Kammbia review.
In 2015, I read and wrote a review for The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, the first Frank Bascombe novel. I wrote that I hated the protagonist and thought I would not read the rest of the books in the series.
“I must admit that Frank Bascombe was the most unlikable character I had read since Sarah Worth in John Updike’s novel S. Frank’s a cad and a callous human being to the people in his life. However, Ford’s strength as a writer keep me interested to see how Frank’s life would turn out.”
That paragraph was from my review of The Sportswriter and summed up my feelings about the novel. A year later, I picked up a copy of Independence Day, the second Frank Bascombe novel and read it. I could not put it down and reviewed that one too. It hooked me into the series with Independence Day and looked forward to reviewing The Lay of the Land, the third Frank Bascombe novel.
I had planned to stop after The Lay of the Land. However, I kept running across Let Me Be Frank With You over the past couple of years and even bought a copy or two only to donate them to the library.
Let me repeat….I’m a reading completist.
I went to the library a week ago and read the opening pages of Let Me Be Frank With You and I knew I would review it.
Let Me Be Frank With You is a collection link of four interlinked novellas that chronicles Frank Bascombe’s life as he reaches his late sixties. (The Sportswriter covered his thirties. Independence Day covered his forties. The Lay of the Land covered his fifties.) The stories take place after the devastation of what Hurricane Sandy did to the New Jersey coast. Bascombe reflects on his life and the damage those choices caused at this late stage in his life.
Frank is quite the observer of modern American life and has colorful opinions on politics (he’s liberal), race (born a Southerner and uses outdated terms for blacks as Negroes), religion (he’s not religious…but does not hate religious folk), and the libido (he thinks about sex often). I will admit his views on those various subjects made me dislike the character as a young man in The Sportswriter but now as a man nearing seventy in Let Me Be Frank With You, I have accepted and appreciated his candor about American culture. I know for some readers, Frank’s views about American culture would be a turnoff from reading the entire Frank Bascombe series. However, I believe Richard Ford has crafted one of great literary characters in modern American fiction and should be a must for readers of literary fiction.
In this collection, two of the four stories struck an emotional chord with me. The second novella, Everything Could Be Worse, is a story about an African American female history teacher—a stranger—who used to live in Frank’s house in Haddam shows up to reveal a startling bit of history about the house. Frank invites her to the home and during the conversation he learns a dark secret from the woman about what happened to her family in the home. It was one of the most powerful scenes I have ever read.
The last novella, Deaths of Others, is a story about Frank reluctantly visiting an old buddy, Eddie, who’s on his deathbed. Eddie lives in a mansion and cajoles Frank into visiting him. Frank agrees to visit and Eddie admits to an event that happened in Frank’s past and it felt like a gut-punch to the stomach. I have to admit that Eddie’s admission surprised as a reader and Frank’s reaction was not what I expected.
I’m glad and sad simultaneously that I have finished the Frank Bascombe books. Even though, I’m more of a fantasy reader, I appreciate this detour from my normal reading highway and can recognize it as one of the best book series I have ever read. Frank Bascombe is a literary descendant of John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom but has carved its own place in modern American fiction. Highly recommended.
plantbirdwoman's review against another edition
5.0
"Love isn't a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts."
- Frank Bascombe's meditation upon visiting his ex-wife
We thought we'd heard the last of Frank Bascombe in The Lay of the Land, published in 2006 and the last in what was billed as the "Frank Bascombe trilogy." But it turns out that Frank wasn't finished with us, or, perhaps more accurately, Richard Ford wasn't finished with Frank. And so we get a fourth Frank Bascombe book. Lucky us.
Each of the three previous books were focused on a particular holiday and this one continues that tradition. This time we are in 2012. Hurricane Sandy has hit and devastated the East Coast, including Frank's New Jersey. We are now several weeks past that tragedy and coming up on Christmas. It's a Christmas that Frank had hoped to host as a "festive family fly-in to ole San Antone" where he looked forward to visiting the Alamo and the River Walk and later heading out to see the LBJ sites. But it was not to be. Now, he can only look forward to a solo Christmas trip to Kansas City to visit his son Paul - not a particularly appealing prospect.
As we meet Frank this time, he is 68 years old and retired from the real estate business. Both that career and his earlier one as a sportswriter are well into his past now. He is still married to his second wife, Sally. In addition to his son, he has his daughter who is a veterinarian in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the mother of his children, his first wife Ann, who is in what Frank refers to as a "high-end old folks home" nearby, where she is being treated for Parkinson's disease.
Let Me Be Frank with You is structured as Frank's meditation on his life as he nears the end of his seventh decade. It is entirely in his voice and Frank's voice is acute, sometimes cynical, and often (to me) laugh-out-loud funny. (I do appreciate Ford's humor. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we come from the same place.)
The book comprises four novellas or extra-long short stories. They all take place in the days leading up to Christmas in the weeks after Sandy and they all feature a character who wants something from Frank.
"I'm Here" features Arnie Urquhart, who, years before, had bought Frank's house on the Jersey shore. That house was upended and destroyed by the hurricane. Now, Arnie insists that Frank come and see it. He needs him to bear witness and to give him his advice.
"The New Normal" finds Frank visiting Ann in her "old folks' home" to deliver a special pillow that she wanted. Once again, this couple who shared so much, including the death of a son, contemplate the failure of their marriage.
In "Everything Could Be Worse," a well-dressed, middle-aged black woman comes to Frank's home in Haddam, New Jersey, and asks if she can see the house. She explains that she grew up there. He invites her in and eventually she tells him the sad and tragic story of her family that occurred in that house.
Finally, in "Deaths of Others," Frank gets a call - several calls, actually - from an old acquaintance, Eddie, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. Eddie asks Frank to visit him and, most reluctantly, he finally does. It turns out that Eddie needed to see him in order to make a shocking deathbed confession.
I enjoyed this book from the first page to the last. One of the things that I found most appealing and which made me empathize with Frank/Richard Ford was that much of his meditation on this stage of his life was in the form of a complaint about the sad decline of the language, something which I, too, find appalling. One of Frank's examples of this is the constant use of the word "awesome" to describe things that are barely mediocre. (Yes, it's one of my many pet peeves!)
Frank Bascombe is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary American literature. He is funny, profane, often politically incorrect, and an acute observer of American life. I wonder if we've now heard the last of him. Or perhaps in another ten years we'll meet him again as he enters his ninth decade. I, for one, look forward to that meeting.
dobeesquared's review
5.0
A short story collection that works to create one (not-too-obvious) whole. The connections within the stories and between them are just right.