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Be Mine

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Be Mine

By: Richard Ford
Narrated by: Richard Poe
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Bloomsbury presents Be Mine by Richard Ford, read by Richard Poe.

A masterful writer' – RAYMOND CARVER

Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is, here, once more our guide to the great American midway.

Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives — sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent — Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter's odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank in typical Bascombe fashion faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days.

In this memorable novel, Richard Ford puts on display the prose, wit and intelligence that make him one of the world's most acclaimed living writers. Be Mine is a profound, funny, poignant love letter to our beleaguered world.

‘One of the finest achievements of modern American fiction’ The Independent©2023 Richard Ford Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage Funny
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Critic reviews

‘A literary project matched in ambition only by John Updike’s Rabbit series … The greatest ambition of all is that Ford has decided to make this grim material into a bright comedy, and has succeeded’
‘Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe series - stands as one of the finest achievements of modern American fiction. Frank’s story comes to a fittingly mordant and brilliant conclusion in Be Mine … a joyful reminder that close attention to lived life is both renewing and affirming’
‘While the portrayal of a father-son bond torqued by the burden of illness is desperately moving,
the snap and crunch of Ford’s finely hewn prose remains an endless pleasure’
‘A funny book, with Frank and Paul’s dialogue – decades of love contained within – reading at times like a comedy double act’
‘Wounding and hilarious … The quality of Ford’s prose leaves the reader breathless; there are sentences and paragraphs here you could read and re-read without ever tiring of doing so’
‘The laureate of the American middle-class middle man … Great’
‘Few writers have captured contemporary American life as incisively as Richard Ford … Bascombe is a memorable literary creation – one of the most complicated and unique characters of our age – and these first-person novels, so resonant in setting and so strong in plot, are full of pathos, as well as being nuanced, wickedly funny depictions of contemporary American life'
'Ford’s world is contingent, frightening, beautiful, comically manifold'
'Frank is heroic in his own quotidian way. He holds himself together the way you and I hold ourselves together (or try to): by snatching at straws in the maelstrom of everyday life. That’s the power of the Bascombe novels. Ford creates a reading experience that feels truer than your own experience … Think of Be Mine as a chance to spend a last few hours with a friend'
‘Ford is a master of first-person narratives in which there is space for philosophical reflection as well as telling human detail’
‘Comic elegy … A picaresque record of American boomerdom … Wonderful’
Praise for Richard Ford:

'A masterful writer'
'Ford writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight'
'A marvellous writer'
'I can't think of many other writers, living or dead, who have given me so many reasons over the years to slow down on the page and pay attention'
'An American master'
All stars
Most relevant
I enjoy Richard Ford's work and also read memoirs. This book, in spite of its difficult subject matter, is a joy to listen to. Unsure of the narrator at first, he's the perfect choice. Be Mine has a bit of everything and, much like life itself, needs to be savoured and understood for what it is. Frank Bascombe at 74 is magnificent.

Stay with it.

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What can you say about steady, thoughtful, occasionally wise Frank. Frank feels so real I've often thought it would be good to have him as a friend. I've invited him on the dinner party game. You know he must be very different to Richard Ford though they've almost become one in my mind. I'll genuinely miss Frank, thinking his way through life.

Frank is quietly wise

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