Let me Be Frank with You

I made my way through Richard Ford's Let Me Be Frank With You.  I was going to say that I had finally made my way through it, but then again it actually didn't take me all that long to read it. It just seemed like it took longer than it did. Which is to say I didn't enjoy it much.

It's difficult to say why.  I really loved the first three Frank Bascombe books. Independence Day in particular really hit home, and I cried at the end of The Lay of the Land when it became apparent that Bascombe was going to be OK.

But now I'm ready to let him go. Ford can just kill him off. Maybe it's because the most recent book is so ham-handedly organized around the topic of Hurricane Sandy, or maybe because somehow the wry neo-Holden Caulfield voice of Bascombe is so incongrous in the brain of a man as old as he is. Maybe it's my fear of my own aging:  am I going to sound like that.

Whatever it is, the book's just not as good as its predecessors. Of course, it is a durned site better than any book I have ever written, I'm well aware of that.

On to the next.  Mouse brought me some very nice books from McIntyre's today at lunch. I'll dig into one of those soon.