Must agree. Read all the Sportswriters save 'let me be frank' Just leaped frogged that one and read BE MINE last Monday. What a way to handle the dying of a character through him experiencing that of his son! And to have the son refuse to accept it the way he refused to take the world seriously.
Beautiful review and I will now subscribe to your Substack. I found the novel bleak and awfully difficult at times, but hugely moving particularly in the epilogue - it is a COVID novel without being a COVID novel. It sprang a tear for that, and for the fact that my interpretation of the very final scene is that Frank dies there on the terrace looking out at the Pacific, and the unidentified voice calling to him is one of the departed. (This sounds incredibly trite in summary, but if you've read the scene, you know what I mean.)
Fascinated by the other reviewer you quote who felt Frank has "a brief affair with a Vietnamese masseuse"! That "affair" is clearly one-sided, precisely the sort of thing a seventy-something man might convince himself is real, and I thought a good throwback to the earlier Bascombe novels indicating that Frank - as clear-eyed as he might be about his son's condition or his relationship with his daughter - is still an unreliable narrator perfectly capable of deluding himself about his romantic conquests.
Wonderfully done review here. Made me want to look up "The Sportswriter" and read further.
Must agree. Read all the Sportswriters save 'let me be frank' Just leaped frogged that one and read BE MINE last Monday. What a way to handle the dying of a character through him experiencing that of his son! And to have the son refuse to accept it the way he refused to take the world seriously.
Beautiful review and I will now subscribe to your Substack. I found the novel bleak and awfully difficult at times, but hugely moving particularly in the epilogue - it is a COVID novel without being a COVID novel. It sprang a tear for that, and for the fact that my interpretation of the very final scene is that Frank dies there on the terrace looking out at the Pacific, and the unidentified voice calling to him is one of the departed. (This sounds incredibly trite in summary, but if you've read the scene, you know what I mean.)
Fascinated by the other reviewer you quote who felt Frank has "a brief affair with a Vietnamese masseuse"! That "affair" is clearly one-sided, precisely the sort of thing a seventy-something man might convince himself is real, and I thought a good throwback to the earlier Bascombe novels indicating that Frank - as clear-eyed as he might be about his son's condition or his relationship with his daughter - is still an unreliable narrator perfectly capable of deluding himself about his romantic conquests.
Indeed. Indeed. Well played.
I was lucky enough to see Richard Ford interviewed last Tuesday evening. Things I noticed are here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/eregnans/p/sproutings-events-in-audience-to?r=2lkgud&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you!