Independence Day (Ford) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[P]owerful....so persuasively does Mr. Ford conjure up the day-to-day texture of Frank Bascombe's life [that not] only does Mr. Ford do a finely nuanced job of delineating Frank's state of mind...but he also ...provide[s] a portrait of a time and a place, of a middle-class community caught on the margins of change and reeling, like Frank, from the wages of loss and disappointment and fear.... [H]is consummate ear for dialogue to give us a wonderfully recognizable cast of supporting characters ...and he orchestrates Frank's emotional transactions with them to create a narrative that's as gripping as it is affecting.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Much of the book is taken up with notes and quotes dealing with novels, poems, and plays, and their authors….They are analyzed and discussed with the intelligence and style of a writer who throughout his adult life was a superlatively perceptive student and a professional writer learning from other professionals, never self—consciously a "critic." The quotations are very revealing and the comments often pearls.
Stephan Spender - New York Times Book Review


We have come to expect brilliant character sketches from Mr. Ford, and he doesn't disappoint us.... With a mastery second to none, Richard Ford has created, and continues to develop in Independence Day, a character we know as well as we know our next-door neighbors. Frank Bascombe has earned himself a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape.
Charles Johnson - New York Times


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.
New York Review of Books


This is a long, closely woven novel that, like life itself, is short on drama but dense with almost unconscious observations of the passing scene.... In fact, if it were possible to write a Great American Novel...this is what it would look like. Ford achieves astonishing effects on almost every page.... [I]t's difficult to imagine a better American novel appearing this year.
Publishers Weekly


That the best-laid plans of mice and men soon go awry is a generalization made concrete in Ford's latest novel, which picks up the story of Frank Bascombe where it left off in a previous novel, The Sportswriter (1986). The time is now the late 1980s, and Frank, divorced, is no longer sportswriting but selling real estate.... Ford has a large following, so this less-than-satisfying sequel is likely to generate demand. —Brad Hooper
Booklist


Bascombe is part angry white male, and part new sensitive guy, but mostly just a smug fool, who lingers over every detail of his life with Harold Brodkey-style obsession. Humorless and full of sham insight ("We're all free agents"), though fans of the first installment will not be disappointed.
Kirkus Reviews