About this item
With The Sportswriter, in 1986, Richard Ford commenced a cycle of novels that ten years later - after Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award - was hailed by The Times of London as "an extraordinary epic [that] is nothing less than the story of the twentieth century itself." Now, a decade later, Frank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate) , more acutely in thrall to life's endless complexities than ever before.His story resumes in the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving, permitting him to revel in the acceptance of "that long, stretching-out time when my dreams would have mystery like any ordinary person's; when whatever I do or say, who I marry, how my kids turn out, becomes what the world - if it makes note at all - knows of me, how I'm seen, understood, even how I think of myself before whatever there is that's wild and unassuagable rises and cheerlessly hauls me off to oblivion." But as a Presidential election hangs in the balance, and a postnuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him along with crises both marital and medical, Frank discovers that what he terms the Permanent Period is fraught with unforeseen perils: "All the ways that life feels like life at age fifty-five were strewn around me like poppies."A holiday, and a novel, no reader will ever forget - at once hilarious, harrowing, surprising, and profound. The Lay of the Land is astonishing in its own right and a magnificent expansion of one of the most celebrated chronicles of our time.
About the Author
Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You as well as the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories. Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
