I’ve read most of Richard Ford’s novels over the years and have always enjoyed his meandering, observational style. He documents Middle America with a keen eye for humbug and bigotry but also with a wry acceptance. He’s a bird watcher. His novels ignore mostly the over heated and over-written-about East and West Coasts and focuses on the mundane lifes of low achievers and regular Joes in the heartland. We follow his modest Everyman Frank Bascombe as he goes through life in five of his novels and in his latest novel, Be Mine, Frank is facing the final curtain. He visited the Dalkey Book Festival in the summer and I experienced first hand his reputation for being a cranky old bollocks when I asked him a question about a negative review by Claire Lowdon in the TLS. I persisted in making my point, a tad after it was clear he wasn’t having it, and experienced the full force of his impressive wrath. I had bought his latest novel Be Mine a few weeks before and following my very public reading from the altar in the Dalkey Town Hall I was disinclined to read it. However, I found myself short-taken and bookless one night so I decided to forgive him and give it a try. The basic premise of the book sounds unpromising: a sick and ageing Frank Bascombe takes his dying and autistic son on a final road trip to Mount Rushmore. What fun we think. But astonishingly it is fun and turns out to be one of his most densely packed and amusing books. Check it out.
