Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre
Review: I've got to put this book right in the middle of the star spectrum only because it didn't stir any emotions on either side. Ford is undoubtedly a talented writer and blessed with a wonderful sense of humor, but the book was slow-paced and lacked the insight such a book needs in order to get away with the pace. Worth reading for Frank Bascombe's keen and witty observations, but ultimately, you won't come away with much.
Rating: 
Summary: Meet the author
Review: I read Ford's Independence Day after he came to my University to do a reading. I hate to admit I didn't read the book before his reading because I thought it would be boring, but through his readings, the subtle humor of the work comes through which may be hard for some readers to extract from words on a page. A must read, I only wish great books weren't so predctably ironic or depressing. A suggestion for those who didn't get it the first time through would be the audio tape.
Rating: 
Summary: An incredible book
Review: Mr. Ford is one of our great American novelists. I hope that his works are required reading in our universities because he has the power to enthrall everyone who comes in contact with his work.
Rating: 
Summary: I'd rather walk than drive this Ford
Review: "Independence Day" is the worst. Just atrocious. And here's the reason why: Ford is a phony. His work, as a whole, is a boring, New Age post-Hemingway dress-up party thrown by a host who's more interested in retreading better, more original writers' ideas than in being a wayfarer himself. And for his fans who feel they're getting a more "authentic" writer over the "fast food fiction" of today should read their Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Barthelme again to see that you can indeed write a text that moves quickly without sacrificing any depth or lack of big ideas. So I totally concur with the other readers who don't "get" Richard Ford. Here's the thing: they're getting him just fine. And there's nothing there. "The Sportswriter" was as humorless as they come, and "Independence Day" falls right into line.
Rating:
Summary: FRANK BASCOMBE FOR PRESIDENT!
Review: Someday I hope to be a writer and I cannot imagine a better role model than Richard Ford. "Independence Day" does not have the most exciting plot but it doesn't require it. This story delves into the intermingling of daily existence like nothing I have ever read. Ford understands what life is all about and he relays it perfectly through Frank Bascombe, a man with real problems.
Rating:
Summary: You'll love it or hate it. I loved it.
Review: Ford drove up from Chinook MT to Regina in November to keynote the annual Saskatchewan Writers Guild awards. The Sportswriter had left me profoundly depressed 10 years ago -- I remembered a very good writer, but a hero going nowhere -- and I wondered why Ford had wasted so much time on Frank Bascombe and had such a big following. I heard Ford several times on radio in the last 2 years, and he sounded so much nore positive and interesting than Bascombe had been. I bought Independence Day so I'd have something to get autographied at the dinner, and to my surprise loved the book, about a middle-aged guy with a fragmented family trying to put the pieces together, a bit like me (I lived in Teaneck NJ, once). This book seemed so much more positive, it seemed possible that Bascombe could get a life. Did I miss something that all those 2's and 3's people got, or are they stuck where I was (and Frank was) 10 years ago? Don't think so. 8 for story, 9 for characters, 11 for language. The Pullitzer committee got it right.
Rating: 
Summary: Have I missed something?
Review: I hesitate to so hastily condemn a book that has won a Pulitzer prize and garnered so many favorable reviews from Amazon users. However, the question persists: have I missed something? Am I simply too young to understand what is going on? Was I supposed to identify with Bascomb? Could anybody? To compare such a cliche-ridden, tired piece of calculated Americana with the works of Updike and Irving seems to me nothing short of heresy. Great American Novel my left foot. Hmmph.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting insight into a strange tribe
Review: I am german and read the german hardcover edition. Although i probably missed some of the finer points through the translation, i think this novel is both deeply humourous and affectionate towards the persons descibed. I found the characterizations were done with love and care which was a delightful contrast to the sloppy fast-food that comes along in most modern fiction. I will definitely read the book again in english.
Rating:
Summary: The "Great American Novel" is alive and kicking
Review: Harrison Ford will never star in a film adaptation of a Richard Ford novel. Guaranteed. In a world where Far Side calendars battle Dilbert screen-savers for readers, Ford novels are a throwback. No chills or spills. No shootouts, cowboys, or hookers. They're Old Technology in a hi-tech world. What's more, you can't summarize them in a 10-second sound bite. His characters hang in limbo somewhere between mundane and freakish (you may not even like them); his plotlines would have the MTV Generation nodding off by Page 2. Yet, in this quick-and-dirty era, Ford paints an astoundingly accurate image of everyday life with an author's equivalent of oils and a horsehair brush. Each dab of color builds to slowly depict an image of reality we know very well but may have never really seen. In Independence Day, the result is an astonishingly original snapshot of 90s America through the dreamy eyes of Frank Bascombe. In Haddam, New Jersey on a Fourth of July weekend gone haywire, Franks makes a circuitous attempt to reconnect with his concept of the American Dream, Family Values, Baseball and Apple Pie. Along the way, Frank encounters a lot of real-life potholes that portray a stark image of the good old U.S of A, one that rings painfully true. Of course, the bumps are what keep us awake and alive--a truism not lost on Frank. Still, it's in Frank's character to blur the edges of all the significant events in his own life (marriage, kids, and ultimately divorce and reconciliation) to the point that they slip slowly, painfully out of reach. We're never really sure why. But we are aware of his attempt to reverse this tendency, to complete his personal search for renewal (an American dream if there ever was one). In short, his is the ultimate case of a man needing something hard to do. Such is not the stuff of sitcoms or made-for-TV movies. This is reality calling, and it's not all skittles and beer. It takes a skilled writer to make the mundane sing. And Independence Day is the work of a master
Rating:
Summary: I'm Okay, You're Okay
Review: Richard Ford, who built a career--hell, he's suddenly the professor emeritus of American letters, pity us all--out of aping Robert Stone, Harry Crews, Tom McGuane, and Raymond Carver, struck real pay dirt when he started ripping off Walker Percy with "The Sportswriter." That worked out so nicely for him that he wrote "Independence Day," which is just as long-winded, new agey, pretentious, and vapid as all of Ford's earlier work. Ford's method was to take Percy's Binx Bolling and dumb him down to the point that nobody really feels threatened by a middle-aged sportswriter's (or real estate agent's in this case) despair. Anyone with the slightest sophistication can see what a phony Ford is--his whole career has been made by advanced networking and literary marketing; he's sort of the default "major American writer" right now, since real writers like Robert Stone and Cormac McCarthy don't care as much for the titles Ford covets. His books are phony embarrassments, all written with a finger in the literary wind. He's a polyanna with no vision, a writing program student all grown up
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