Rating: 
Summary: A struggle to read!
Review: I have no doubt that Richard Ford is a writer of talent, indeed the skill of the storyteller emerges at intervals throughout this novel, but that was not enough to either engage me as a reader or ultimately to convince me to like the book, it's characters or it's plot. Independence Day won the 1995 Pultizer Prize for fiction and although most of the reviews listed on Amazon would suggest that the award is justified, I do struggle to agree with that analysis.The plot, although I would contest that definition, is contained within three days of the life of Frank Bascombe, a forty something, divorced real estate agent as he attempts to take his son on a holiday. To fill in some of the spaces Ford gives us a great many philosophical ramblings. Herein lies my problem with Independence Day. I have no objection to philosophy, indeed I was confused by it on a regular basis while at University. However, my main motivation for reading a novel, any novel is to be entertained. That can be through sheer enjoyment, through struggling with the challenge of the ideas (including philosophical ideas) through humour, through frustration and anger and so on. Independence Day provided no trigger at all to stimulate an emotion on any level barring that of boredom. Consequently the book for me, and I'm aware that here I am in the minority, is contrived, repetitive, at times shallow with the pretence of a deep and meaningful statement. I was unable to invest in any of the characters and thus did not care what happened to them during the course of the novel. Ford has the reputation of a good writer but I feel with this novel he goes to great lengths to convince us that he deserves that title.
Rating: 
Summary: American Classic
Review: Richard Ford has created in Frank Bascome the most interesting, insightful & thought provoking character in American literature since Holden Caufield. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend, Mr. Ford takes us on a journey that moves from the current day to flashbacks in the life of Frank Bascome. He is a real estate agent in a southern New Jersey town and one of his current clients is a couple who are looking for the ideal home. When Frank thinks he has found the right home, they have reservations. Frank never seems to be able to meet the couple's pie-in-the-sky expectations and that is central theme to the book. No matter how hard we try, we never seem to meet of own expectations in life. Frank has had a failed marriage, a failed career as a sportswriter and has entered what he calls an "existance period" in his life. He yearns for the days gone by when as he says "pride still mattered". Mr. Ford's perspectives on life in general are razor sharp and he balances the deepness of the story with the right amount of humor so the book doesn't become too heavy-handed. I recommend this book as highly as any book out there. If you liked "Catcher In The Rye", check this one out. You will not be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Lack of Chemistry?
Review: This is the story of Frank Bascombe's transition from his Existence Period to his Permanent Period, neither term I entirely understand, even after 450 pages. An interesting, life-like aspect of Frank is that he seems to be a different person in his life than when he's narrating the story. As Frank's hot-dog vendor employee says, "Frank, you seem one way and are another." And so we all are. Frank's not the most likable guy in the world, but he's real, with real, believable concerns about his life. The book just didn't click with me. Maybe I'm too young at 37 to understand the Existence Period, maybe I just wanted something (anything!) to happen. So though I liked the book's style (similar to a favorite author, John Updike), I'm still left unsatisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: Engrossing
Review: Not thinking I would like this book was an awful mistake on my part. It is eerily real, which is what makes it depressing, but simultaneously addicting. My other mistake was not reading The Sportswriter first (but so is the woe when you are trying to read all of the Pulitzer books and the first book doesn't win! )
Rating:
Summary: Lighten it Up a Little, Okay?
Review: This is a pretty good read, although too long. It is the story of a New Jersey realtor, living and working in an upper middle class town. The plot takes place over the course of the three day period leading up to July 4, 1988. The narrator is mid-fortyish, divorced, and spends these days: trying to sell a house, meeting his girlfriend, arranging to take, and taking his troubled son on a little vacation, and in general coping with life's minor and major tribulations. While the plot is moving, his comments on the characters involved and the events which occur are truly excellent and insightful, but too often, much too often, in fact regularly throughout this frustrating book, he transgresses into lengthy philosophical new-age ruminations which are bafflingly complex and ultimately meaningless. For example, he describes the current period of his life as his "existence period," and discusses what this means to him ad nauseam. He runs into his long lost half-brother late in the book, and his brother's prevailing philosophy is that of "continuation." Every adult in the book eventually has a conversation like this with him, in which they confusedly try to understand the world around them and their part in it, but once again, in language that is far too obtuse. Some of the conversations are laughable--people just don't talk like this. I will admit that there are some occasional valuable insights, but the overriding problem of the book is that these people just take themselves too damn seriously. The narrator is a very nice guy, and you know you'd like him, but on the back of the book is his picture, actually the author, okay? He is a skinny guy, with longish hair, hollowed out eye sockets, and a permanently raised brow. Here is a guy, you think, who worries too much. Take it easy. Cheeez.
Rating:
Summary: there may be nothing to control
Review: The most impressive page of this Pulitzer-winning novel would be numbered "-2". It is where the author thanks two foundations for paying him to stay home and write it. A great gift for your engineer friends, they'll think Richard Ford novelized the science fiction movie Independence Day. Actually the book is about a long uneventful weekend in the life of Frank Bascombe, a divorced real estate salesman in Haddam, New Jersey. Don't read it for the plot! "Unmarried men in their forties, if we don't subside entirely into the landscape, often lose important credibility and can even attract unwholesome attention in a small, conservative community. And in Haddam, in my new circumstances, I felt I was perhaps becoming the personage I least wanted to be and, in the years since my divorce, had feared being: the suspicious bachelor, the man whose life has no mystery, the graying, slightly jowly, slightly too tanned and trim middle-ager, driving around town in a cheesy '58 Chevy ragtop polished to a squeak, always alone on balmy summer nights, wearing a faded yellow polo shirt and green suntans, elbow over the window top, listening to progressive jazz, while smiling and pretending to have everything under control, when in fact there was nothing to control." I think that with those two sentences, Ford managed to say what his book was about. So I'll shut up.
Rating:
Summary: Independence and Indifference
Review: Undoubtedly, 'Independence Day' excels 'The Sportswriter': author's language remains excellent but its plot gains tensity and profundity and its characters become reliable. Frank Bascombe, a protagonist of both novels, terminates his so-called Existence Period, a rather undistinctly defined (despite a deluge of words) span of time in his life which quintessence was a pure indifference to everybody except empty but high-esteemed self. New marriage of his former wife (who at last has a real Christian name instead of humiliating X of the previous novel) and problems with son compel him to alter. Unlucky father&son's tour ends with an accidental physical injury of the son and unforeseen psychic impact on the father. Filial love concealed by external impertinence and paternal love crushed by lassitude. Virtually this is a novel about a man who is trying to preserve his personal independence and simultaneously to surmount confines of human indifference. Ford's 'Independence Day' is positively a Good American Novel but not a Great one. From my point of view, all genuine Great American Novels were written in the twentieth century by William Faulkner.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious but well-written
Review: I suppose I will never belong to the self-proclaimed literati, because while I can appreciate the fact that this book is very well written, still I believe that that is not enough in itself to make it a great book - certainly not a Putlizer-Prize winner. Having never read the prequel to this book, it's possible I've missed something crucial that could have contributed to my enjoyment of Independence Day. But as it was, I found it to be tedious, often boring, and almost transparently "deep" - as if Ford was more concerned with waxing philosophical than with telling a compelling story. There are so many authors out there who can both write well and tell a compelling story, that Ford is hardly the first author I would turn to.
Rating:
Summary: Not an action/adventure novel
Review: It's true, as many reviewers have pointed out, that there are not any terrorists, CIA agents, car chases, or killer viruses in this book. Just character, dialogue, wit, language. I've read some of Ford's other work (another novel and a few short stories) and would say that this is "warmer" or "softer" or less bleak than a lot of his fiction. Some people might night like that. I enjoyed his bleak fiction but I also enjoyed this book very much, and thought it was one of the best novels I've read in the last couple of years.
Rating:
Summary: Transformative
Review: This book had a powerful impact on me. I read it over 3 years ago and still think about its ground-level view of a "real" American life. The characters and description of life in New Jersey are masterfully done, although not riveting in the manner of many fictional thriller novels. Read this book to ESCAPE from the neon lit, 90 mph lifestyle that surrounds us, and allow yourself to feel the imperfect reality of a bittersweet and mundane existence. It carried me away, and I remember the journey fondly.
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