The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
2 Rating(s)
List: $30.00 | Sale: $21.00
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The Lay of the Land

Author: Richard Ford

Narrator: Joe Barrett

Unabridged: 24 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/24/2006


Synopsis

BONUS FEATURE: Exclusive interview with the author.

With The Sportswriter, in 1985, Richard Ford began 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.”

Frank Bascombe’s story resumes, in the fall of 2000, with the presidential election still hanging in the balance and Thanksgiving looming before him with all the perils of a post-nuclear family get-together. He’s now plying his trade as a realtor on the Jersey shore and contending with health, marital and familial issues that have his full attention: “all the ways that life seems like life at age fifty-five strewn around me like poppies.”

Richard Ford’s first novel in over a decade: the funniest, most engaging (and explosive) book he’s written, and a major literary event.

About The Author

Richard Ford is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Independence Day and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction. He lives in New York and Maine. Ford's best known titles are The SportswriterIndependence DayThe Lay of the Land, and Let Me Be Frank with You. Joe Barrett’s 30 years as an actor includes appearances off Broadway in Reunion and on Broadway in Raggedy Ann. His television credits include The Conan O’Brien Show and The David Letterman Show. He has appeared in features films and has been seen in dozens of commercials.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jaline

In this third novel of the Frank Bascombe quartet, we find Frank in what he calls his “Permanent” phase. Frank is now 55 years old, he feels estranged from his son, has a tentatively good relationship with his daughter, and his ex-wife (a widow in her second marriage) still enters his life from time......more

Goodreads review by Steve

In this, the last in the trilogy, Frank is still the ever-thinking everyman, now age 55. He recently returned from the Mayo Clinic with less than full assurances, has seen his second wife leave him under odd circumstances, and has taken two steps forward and one step back (or is it one forward and t......more


Quotes

Praise for Richard Ford:

“Ford captures the intricacies of human beings better than just about any other writer alive. . . . [He] is a great surveyor of human nature, a master of the small moments that take place in between and shape the larger movements of our lives.”
The Globe and Mail

“With a mastery second to none, Richard Ford has created a character we know as well as our next-door neighbours.
Frank Bascombe has earned himself a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape, but he has done so with a wry wit and a fin de siècle wisdom that is very much his own.”
The New York Times Book Review

“Ford is one of the greatest writers of our time, from any country and in any language, whose finely crafted words can pierce the heart like an arrow.”
Calgary Herald