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"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he is plunged through the cracks of reality into a world of shadows and darkness—the Neverwhere. Learn more | See related books
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"This novel showcases many of Mr. Ford's gifts: his ability to capture the nubby, variegated texture of ordinary life; his unerring ear for how ordinary people talk; his talent for conjuring up subsidiary characters with a handful of brilliant brushstrokes. MICHIKO KAKUTANI, New York Times
Frank Bascombe, real estate manager, aka sportswriter and novelist, is in the prime of his life. He is on what he describes as ""the permanent phase" of his life, the period when life "starts to look like a destination rather than a journey". He is 55, his second wife has left him for her first husband, he has prostate cancer, his daughter is moving from her lesbian phase, to what exactly? His son has a girlfriend and wants a relationship with his father. But Paul, the son is overbearing and, what was it that Frank did not give him? His first wife, Anne, calls and wants to start another relationship, But, do they really love each other? These and other life problems all emerge within three days of this 500 page novel.
These three days take place in 2000. I began to see the irony in Frank's thinking when he said his life was going down a permanent road, just when the election of Bush has just taken place. There is no peace in America or in Frank's life at this time. We find that events and tragedy's spring up around us at all times. Frank realizes he has fear for 'The Lay of the Land' in 2000, and, as we all know 9/11/2001 is just around the corner. We have the luxury of looking back as Frank tells his story.
Some parts of this novel are too limiting, the explosion in the local hospital, and one of the police officers must question him as a suspect but that never occurs. His first wife has but a small part in the novel, and it is confusing.Read more ›
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39 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Having written his first two tomes in 1986 and 1996, author Richard Ford seems poised to end Frank Bascombe's story as he approaches the age of 60; with a decade's gap. Ford is a marvelous writer of prose, and while much of the book takes place in Bascombe's thoughts, we are treated to dialogue in his encounters with friends and foes from the earlier books, as well as a new character or two - notably his employee, realtor Mike Mahoney, who is a Tibetan Buddhist and a consummate capitalist.
In addition to the ups and downs of normal life, as the book opens Bascombe muses on his own mortality. He has suffered from prostrate cancer for which he is treated at the Mayo clinic with a procedure that sounds like a clinical trial, so incomprehensible is it to me to be walking around with radioactive pellets in your body.
It is this sense of ongoing danger and risk that sets the tone for the musings of Bascombe, as he looks back on his successes and failures during the "permanent period" of his life....where he's reached his destination on the Jersey shore, instead of continuing his journey. But where his thoughts on life and death seemed to spur his actions in the first two novels, in "The Lay of the Land", they seem somewhat incidental to a series of unrelated, ordinary happenings. There are whole sections of the book, that, while descriptive, seem to go nowhere. Eventually, as you bog down and wonder where Ford is taking you, you start to be bothered by his lengthy descriptive passages for ordinary incidentals. In short, where the first two books gave depth and sincerity to writer/realtor Bascombe, this third novel becomes tedious.
I must say I'm disappointed, because after the first chapter, "Are You Ready to Meet Your Maker?Read more ›
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47 of 56 people found the following review helpful
I love this series and have waited patiently for further Frank Adventures. The wait has paid off. Yes, it's a long book; and yes there is some repetition, but the amazing wit and insightfullness of the writer's ability to plunge the depths of Frank's soul is astounding. Each sentence is wonderfully crafted with twists and turns that tug at your soul and at other times make you laugh outloud; he paints images that stay with you; notes situations and and experiences that plague all of us 50 somethings. I thought it was a fabulous read. Not a quick read, but one to be savoured by the fire this winter. He makes me laugh that warm human bittersweet laugh of recognition. *** I subsequently went ahead and got the AUDIO version .. wow ...Go ahead a treat yourself .. get this audio and listen to the wonderful narrator (Joe Barret) tell Frank Bascombe's story. This is a book that is meant to be heard out loud. I am not an audiobook fan, but this reading has won me over. The writing is heart-wrenchingly touching and the reading supports the writing 100 per cent. I laughed, I cried. Gee whiz, it's good stuff.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
As the guardian of Frank Bascombe's life and times, Richard Ford faces in this third book a two-pronged dilemma: First, how to continue the trend of surpassed expectations for the product, and, second, how to keep it fresh. In the end, an alienated protaganist who squats inside our heads for twenty-five years is either going to start having wacky things happen to him, or start to sound tediously self-absorbed, or both. In The Lay of the Land, sadly, it's both. Several of the things that happen to Frank in this book (as things can only happen to Frank) are so implausible as to make them, paradoxically, predictable--as if the only person they could have happened to is the person to whom they must. Moreover, a guy who, after twenty-five years of behaving in these very ways, can still leave his house to squirrel-up a routine real estate deal when he knows he is about to receive the most important telephone call of his recent life, seems at this point less deserving of our sympathy as a modern anti-hero, and more as someone in immediate and lasting need of some heavy-duty counseling. All in all, a disappointing effort from a true virtuoso of the modern form. Sorry, Richard. Sorry, Frank. Sorry, everyone.
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