The Lay of the Land

Frank Bascombe, Book 3

By: Richard Ford

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 24 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

With The Sportswriter, in 1986, Richard Ford commenced a cycle of novels that, 10 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 20th century itself." Now, a decade later, Frank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate), and more acutely in thrall to life's endless complexities than ever before.

His story resumes in the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving, permitting him to revel in the acceptance of "that long, stretching-out time when my dreams would have mystery like any ordinary person's; when whatever I do or say, who I marry, how my kids turn out, becomes what the world, if it makes note at all, knows of me, how I'm seen, understood, even how I think of myself before whatever there is that's wild and unassuagable rises and cheerlessly hauls me off to oblivion."

But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a postnuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, along with crises both marital and medical, Frank discovers that what he terms the Permanent Period is fraught with unforeseen perils: "All the ways that life feels like life at age 55 were strewn around me like poppies."

This is a holiday, and a novel, no reader will ever forget, at once hilarious, harrowing, surprising, and profound. The Lay of the Land is astonishing in its own right and a magnificent expansion of one of the most celebrated chronicles of our time.

©2006 Richard Ford (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

• National Book Critics Circle 2006 Award Finalist, Fiction

"The third and most eventful novel in the Frank Bascombe series." (Kirkus Reviews)
"Ford summons a remarkable voice for his protagonist, ruminant, jaunty, merciless, generous and painfully observant, building a dense narrative from Frank's improvisations, epiphanies and revisions." (Publishers Weekly)
"As ever the drama is rooted in the interior world of its authentically life-sized hero, as he logs long hours on the highways and back roads of New Jersey, taking expansive stock of middle-age defeats and registering the erosions of a brilliantly evoked landscape of suburbs, strip malls and ocean towns." (New York Times Book Review)

Lay of ....

This is the first review I have written and I feel compelled to write a warning to those who are not middle aged, diagnosed with cancer and bothered with /by disappointing children. Although it is well written, it wasn't compelling. There are too many other books I wish I would have chosen.

Where's the story?

Verrrryyyy loooonng on meaningless details, very short on any interesting events. I skipped large parts because I just could not stand to listen to more descriptions of stores, roads, traffic signs, cars, expressions, feelings, etc. And guess what, I did not miss any of the story. So little happens, that it could be told in 10 minutes. One of the worst books i have listened to.

Boring ramblings of a passive aggressive shallow jerk

I’ve been working my way through the list of Pulitzer Prize winning fiction. Unfortunately Richard Ford‘s book “Independence Day” was on the list. it is the 2nd book of a trilogy. That made me think I should listen to book one to understand book 2. What a mistake. I got sucked into the trilogy, Hoping and anticipating with each book that surely it would get better. It didn’t. My mind is blown that this series of books could have five star ratings and one of them could have been a Pulitzer Prize winner. What in the world is going on?

My belief that Pulitzer Prize winners would have literary merit made me hang in to get through this trilogy buy wow, it was tough. It is nothing but the repetitive, never ending ramblings of a shallow, passive aggressive guy who never evolves. His musings are not profound or enlightening but rather the stream of consciousness of a VERY ordinary (I would say sub average) man. I felt like I was stuck in a small car on a cross country trip with the biggest bag of wind on the planet, submerged in his self indulgent mediocrity.

The best thing about this audiobook is Joe Barrett. His narration is stellar but even the sound of his wonderful voice can’t turn this bore into anything worth your time.
Listen to 10 minutes and you’ve heard everything this guy has to say. He continues for 3 novels to say the same thing over and over and over...

Disappointed

I really enjoyed The Sportswriter and Independence Day but have to agree with another reviewer that a change of narrator for book 3 was disappointing. I hadn't noticed the change until after I purchased. It ruined the image I had in my mind of Frank and some other characters created by Richard Poe's narration. I just couldn't get into it and really only kept listening to see where the characters ended up. This narrator made Frank sound like an old man at 55. i also felt many things Frank does in this novel are out of character with the Frank Bascombe I admired in the first two novels.

Boring

Boring, boring, boring. Gave up one third into it.

Disappointing

Bloated, full of meandering, rhythmic sentences that fail to coalesce into a whole greater than its parts. There's no suspense about what might happen, who Frank will turn out to be. After Independence Day and the Sportswriter, two of my favorite novels of the past 20 years, a major letdown.
Narration is generally good -- except when it comes to dialogue by characters who are deemed to need distinctive accents (a southern woman who Frank "sponsors", Londoners, Frank's daughter, ...). These accents are over the top and painful ... sometimes less IS more.

Jay (Joyce's husband)