Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There are scenes of laugh out loud hilarity. A truly great novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A L-O-N-G Weekend
Review: Independence Day is the story of a long (oh, so very, very long) Fourth of July weekend for middle-aged real estate agent Frank Bascombe. Over the weekend he maybe makes some slight changes, turning his life in a new direction (possibly).I'm not a middle-aged guy, but I've had some revelations in my own young life, so I get what Ford is saying. Frank is mired in the "Existence Period" where he pretty much just tries not to let things bother him, just keep everything even keel. On this holiday weekend, Frank and his son Paul, who's been getting in trouble for shoplifting, vandalism, so on, are going to the Basketball and Baseball Halls of Fame. At first glance, I thought the book would revolve around the travels of father and son, but this is not the case. Instead, for a good two hundred pages or so we readers are mired in the dull life of Frank Bascombe as he tries to sell a house to middle-aged former hippies who have yet to discover the comfortably numb bliss of the Existence Period. And there's Frank checking out his hot dog and root beer stand outside town, trying to collect rent from his deadbeat tennants, and having overly philosophical talks with his girlfriend, whom Frank really can't commit to because it would upset the delicate balance in his mundane life. When the father and son jamboree finally does get underway, I almost wished it hadn't, because Paul is a very weird kid. He reminded me of a couple cousins of mine, which is not a good thing. After Frank tries to bond with his son at the Basketball Hall of Fame and on the way to Cooperstown (without lots of success) Paul is mercifully hit in the eye when he stands directly in the path of a batting cage pitching machine and has to go to the hospital. Inexplicibly, Frank's half-brother takes him to the hospital why Paul is choppered there. The half-brother appears from nowhere and his sudden appearance seemed a little too convenient for me. Anyway, after Paul's injury, Frank begins to realize that maybe he should try to get out of the Existence Period and commit to his girlfriend, have a better relationship with his ex-wife and kids, so on. The book grinds to a halt before it's really clear what exactly Frank is going to do, which left me wondering, "I read all this way for what?" A book so long and plodding, I wanted some kind of conclusion, something to make me feel it was worthwhile, and I don't think I got that. My biggest complaint is that some of the characters didn't seem real to me. Paul (and his sister) are so weird, the girlfriend is too cerebral, and the ex-wife was flat. Maybe I just don't know enough people... However, this is a fairly good book. The story, as slow as it is, is engrossing and the writing is almost top-notch. I'd recommend giving it a look, especially if you're a middle-aged man in an Existence Period of your own.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic of the Modern Voice
Review: Independence Day is the sequel to The Sportswriter, Ford's brilliant narrative on the present and past life of Frank Bascombe. In Independence Day, Bascombe's life has succumbed to the inevitable - change. His ex-wife and kids have moved away, he has a new career, a new house, a new girlfriend, and he's five years older. Though along with this change, he tries his damnedest to cling to the comforts of the past while navigating the present and fending off the future - his "Existence Period." As with The Sportswriter, Ford masterfully blends the story and dialogue, while unlike The Sportswriter, he doesn't need to rely on the flashback to fill in the blanks. Whereas they have a common thread, Independence Day stands on its own and shines and can certainly be regarded as a masterpiece of modern literature.
Rating:
Summary: Mildly amusing, but too plodding
Review: Narrator Frank Bascombe is coping with mid-life, feelings for an ex-wife, a slightly screwball kid and other aspects of his fairly mundane life during the July 4th weekend when this book takes place. Perhaps if I were a middle-aged man facing some of the same issues, I would have enjoyed this book more. But as a 30-something woman, most of the character's introspective observations (and that's pretty much what this book is) didn't interest me. This book has little plot to speak of. Some of the kooky characters were kind of fun, and the prose has its moments. But overall I just wished it would end.
Rating:
Summary: Independence Day on Tape
Review: I'm writing about Independence Day on tape, specifically, the Random House abridged version (narrated by John Rubinstein) versus the Recorded Books unabridged version (narrated by Richard Poe). Some books are improved when they are abridged, but this isn't one of them. Richard Ford is such a careful writer that nothing should be dropped from this story, and certainly not the 16 hours that were dropped from the 19-hour Recorded Books version to get the 3-hour Random House version. The result is a travesty. When we bought the abridged version by mistake from e-bay, we ended up throwing it away, not wanting to put it back in circulation. This book needs to be savored in its entirety. And Richard Poe's reading of the unabridged version is the perfect means for doing that. I'm now reading The Sportswriter (not available on tape) and hearing Poe's voice on every page. So, I would give the book 5 stars, the unabridged book on tape 5 stars (6 if I could), and the abridged book on tape 0 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Write more stories please, Mr. Ford
Review: This book is entirely too long, too boring, too plagued by a main character so paralyzed by introspection he can't narrate a sentence or two without a parenthetical aside (and I'm not kidding). Short version: Frank Bascombe's been through the death of a child, a divorce, and career change, and now he's selling real estate (which is probably a joke on someone, or us all). Sure he's trying to look cool, but Frank wiggles and waffles and rethinks everything. He's a walking mid-life crisis, and the truth is he's just not that likeable. This novel attempts to show his emergence from this crisis period over a 4th of July weekend (get it?), but all it really sets out for us is a litany of boring details about a largely boring, unsympathetic character. Ford deserves a boatload of the praise he gets for his writing, but it's not for this or certainly its predecessor "The Sportswriter," which suffered from the same flaws. Ford is a short story writer, perhaps America's very best (no fooling), and this novel proves it.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant internal monologue
Review: I agree with the reviewer (...) who raved about Richard Poe's brilliant reading of an unabridged, audio version of this book. Having read many of the divergent opinions listed here by Amazon readers, and remembering some of my own struggles to read authors like Tim Parks (whose narrators internalize much of the story and who digress often), it occurs to me that perhaps this story is better enjoyed on tape. I couldn't wait to get in my car every day and listen to Poe's witty, heart-felt rendition of Ford's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Independence Day is essentially an internal monologue, set on the long July 4th weekend of 1988. It is a sequel to Ford's earlier novel The Sportswriter, which I have yet to read, but I never got the impression I was missing anything due to lack of familiarity with the earlier novel. The protagonist is Frank Bascombe, a divorced, well-educated former sportswriter who now makes his living selling real estate in the affluent New Jersey town of Haddam, while supplementing his earnings with a couple of rental properties he owns in the town's African American neighborhood. Bascombe is at something of a mid-life crisis. We learn that he has lost a son, and while he has been divorced from his wife for years, he still has feelings for her and secretly hopes for a reconciliation. At the same time, he is seen carrying on a half-hearted affair with a presumed widow whose husband left years earlier and never came back. Bascombe has planned to spend the long weekend with his troubled teenage son Paul, who is apparently battling some sort of mental illness or depression; for some unknown reason Bascombe decides to pick up his son in Connecticut, and drive to the basketball and baseball halls of fame in Springfield, Mass. and Cooperstown, N.Y. Although quite a bit happens over the course of the three days, the novel is not necessarily plot-driven, and after you finish reading it (or better yet listening) you don't remember what happened nearly as much as you remember the characters themselves. In that respect it reminded me a little of a book like Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool, which I loved, although I now remember few details of the story. Frank's uneasy alliance with Paul, his guilt over taking him and not his sister away for the weekend, and his struggles to maintain his sanity over a long, stressful weekend were classic and very richly drawn by Ford. We learn Frank's thoughts at every turn, whenever he confronts another character, and at times the thoughts are brilliant, sad, funny or all of the above. For example, while trying to give his disinterested son a civics lesson on the meaning of Independence Day, Paul feigns confusion and asks a question or two, which the narrator Frank knows were really meant to mock him. Paul delights at ridiculing the hall of fame during the trip, while narrator Frank tries to keep up appearances and generate enthusiasm for displays like "Bob Lanier's shoes" while leafing through the color brochures. There is an undercurrent of sadness and tragedy in the book, including Frank's own lost child and divorce, the earlier murder of another realtor at Bascombe's office, and even the death years earlier of a family pet in an accident, which still troubles Paul. However the novel has an upbeat tone about it, as if Frank has benefitted from therapy and is destined to look on the bright side even as other characters accuse him of being hard and uncaring. There is also plenty of humor in the book, made all the funnier by narrator Poe's excellent renditions of the character voices. Frank tries desperately to sell a house to a picky Vermont couple, and his partner in a strange "birch beer" and hot dog stand remains vigilant with his shotgun, ready to blast some suspicious Mexicans who he believes want to rob him. All in all, the book has a voice which I found refreshing and amazingly true-to-life, with observations and asides that often had me laughing out loud or shaking my head at their poignant truth. I don't know from experience what thoughts abound in the head of a middle aged, divorced father who is estranged from his kids and who desperately wants to connect with them before it is too late, but I suspect Ford, in writing this book, got them exactly right. I recommend it highly, especially the audio version narrated by Richard Poe.
Rating:
Summary: Meandering, boring
Review: Maybe it's because I'm not 40 something, divorced, on a second career, with two estranged kids but I just didn't get much out of this book. I like the introspection and character development but the book meanders (kind of like life I guess) and is long-winded. Disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Read it
Review: I'm writing this to summarize what the other reviewers have said: If you believe that a great plot makes a great book and want to "like" your protagonist, stick to Oprah's book club. Or better yet, go see a movie. If you value brilliant prose, read this book. Much of the humour involves references/allusions. Maybe some people didn't get it.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting read
Review: This book is certainly different in the way it has been written. It is very readable - not the sort of book that has you gripping 'til the end but a meandering sort of novel. It is a well written insight into how we all probably meander through our lives doing what we need to do to keep going. Don't pass up the opportunity to read if it comes your way.
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