Be Mine

A literary project matched in ambition only by John Updikes Rabbit series The greatest ambition of all is that Ford has decided to make this grim material into a bright comedy, and has succeeded * Financial Times * Richard Fords Frank Bascombe series - stands as one of the finest achievements of modern American fiction. Franks story comes to a fittingly mordant and brilliant conclusion in Be Mine a joyful reminder that close attention to lived life is both renewing and affirming * The Independent * While the portrayal of a father-son bond torqued by the burden of illness is desperately moving, the snap and crunch of Fords finely hewn prose remains an endless pleasure * Daily Mail * A funny book, with Frank and Pauls dialogue decades of love contained within reading at times like a comedy double act * Irish Times * Wounding and hilarious The quality of Fords prose leaves the reader breathless; there are sentences and paragraphs here you could read and re-read without ever tiring of doing so * Business Post * The laureate of the American middle-class middle man Great * Telegraph * Few writers have captured contemporary American life as incisively as Richard Ford Bascombe is a memorable literary creation one of the most complicated and unique characters of our age and these first-person novels, so resonant in setting and so strong in plot, are full of pathos, as well as being nuanced, wickedly funny depictions of contemporary American life' * Independent * 'Fords world is contingent, frightening, beautiful, comically manifold' * Guardian * 'Frank is heroic in his own quotidian way. He holds himself together the way you and I hold ourselves together (or try to): by snatching at straws in the maelstrom of everyday life. Thats the power of the Bascombe novels. Ford creates a reading experience that feels truer than your own experience Think of Be Mine as a chance to spend a last few hours with a friend' * The Times * Ford is a master of first-person narratives in which there is space for philosophical reflection as well as telling human detail * Mail on Sunday * Comic elegy A picaresque record of American boomerdom Wonderful * Novel of the Month, The Oldie * Praise for Richard Ford: 'A masterful writer' * Raymond Carver * 'Ford writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight' * Observer * 'A marvellous writer' * John Banville * '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 * 'An American master' * Daily Telegraph *

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.