The Lay of the Land
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST - The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day and The Sportswriter brings back the unforgettable Frank Bascombe in this astonishing meditation on modern-day America.
A sportswriter and a real estate agent, husband and father--Frank Bascombe has been many things to many people. His uncertain youth behind him, we follow him through three days during the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving. But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a post-nuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, Frank discovers that what he terms "the Permanent Period" is fraught with unforeseen perils. An astonishing meditation on America today and filled with brilliant insights, The Lay of the Land is a magnificent achievement from one of the most celebrated chroniclers of our time. Also available in the Bascombe Trilogy: The Sportswriter and Independence Day
A sportswriter and a real estate agent, husband and father--Frank Bascombe has been many things to many people. His uncertain youth behind him, we follow him through three days during the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving. But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a post-nuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, Frank discovers that what he terms "the Permanent Period" is fraught with unforeseen perils. An astonishing meditation on America today and filled with brilliant insights, The Lay of the Land is a magnificent achievement from one of the most celebrated chroniclers of our time. Also available in the Bascombe Trilogy: The Sportswriter and Independence Day
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Community Reviews
The third in Ford's Frank Bascombe series. Frank is now 55 and reached what he calls the Permanent Period. Recent events (a prostate cancer diagnosis, his second wife leaving him, his relationship with his son Paul, concerns about his daughter Clarissa, to name a few) have made him become more introspective. I would say there's a bit of existential angst, except Frank doesn't believe in existentialism.
At one point he is sitting in a bar in the middle of the day, waiting for his smashed car window to be fixed at the repair shop next door, when grief for a son who died decades earlier suddenly overtakes him, right then and there. He struggles to understand what's happening to him. "More tears are falling. I could laugh through them if I didn't have a potentially self-erasing pain in my chest. What is it that I'm supposed to accept? That I'm an asshole? (I confess.) That I have no heart? (I don't confess.) But what would be the hardest thing to say and mean it? .... And of course the answer's plain, unless we're actors or bad-check artists or spies, when it's still probably plain but more tolerable: that your life is founded on a lie, and you know what the lie is and won't admit it, maybe can't. Yes, yes, yes, yes." "A lot of things seem one way but are another. And how a thing seems is often just the game we play to save ourselves from great, panicking pain." So many quotes like these just pulled me right in with him as I found myself relating to these thoughts more than I'd care to admit.
It's not a page turner, but he gives us many things to reflect on, and his dry, dark humor shows up ever so subtly here and there along the way to keep things from getting bogged down in the "Life's Deep Meaning" analysis.
At one point he is sitting in a bar in the middle of the day, waiting for his smashed car window to be fixed at the repair shop next door, when grief for a son who died decades earlier suddenly overtakes him, right then and there. He struggles to understand what's happening to him. "More tears are falling. I could laugh through them if I didn't have a potentially self-erasing pain in my chest. What is it that I'm supposed to accept? That I'm an asshole? (I confess.) That I have no heart? (I don't confess.) But what would be the hardest thing to say and mean it? .... And of course the answer's plain, unless we're actors or bad-check artists or spies, when it's still probably plain but more tolerable: that your life is founded on a lie, and you know what the lie is and won't admit it, maybe can't. Yes, yes, yes, yes." "A lot of things seem one way but are another. And how a thing seems is often just the game we play to save ourselves from great, panicking pain." So many quotes like these just pulled me right in with him as I found myself relating to these thoughts more than I'd care to admit.
It's not a page turner, but he gives us many things to reflect on, and his dry, dark humor shows up ever so subtly here and there along the way to keep things from getting bogged down in the "Life's Deep Meaning" analysis.
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