Be Mine

Description

'A masterful writer' RAYMOND CARVER Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is, here, once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives - sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent - Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter's odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank in typical Bascombe fashion faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days. In this memorable novel, Richard Ford puts on display the prose, wit and intelligence that make him one of the world's most acclaimed living writers. Be Mine is a profound, funny, poignant love letter to our beleaguered world.

Richard Ford is the author of The Sportswriter; Independence Day, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Lay of the Land; and the New York Times bestseller Canada. His short story collections include the bestseller Let Me Be Frank With You, Sorry for Your Trouble, Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins, which contain many widely anthologized stories. He lives in New Orleans with his wife Kristina Ford.

Praise for Richard Ford: A masterful writer * Raymond Carver * A marvellous writer * John Banville * An American master * Daily Telegraph * Ford writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight * Observer * I can't think of many other writers, living or dead, who have given me so many reasons over the years to slow down on the page and pay attention * Times Literary Supplement *