Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944. He has published six other novels and two previous collections of stories which include The Sportswriter, Independence Day and most recently A Multitude of Sins. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and ,the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes.
It is fall, 2000 and Frank Bascombe has arrived at a state of optimistic pragmatism that he calls the Permanent Period of life. Epic mistakes have already been made, dreams downsized, and Frank reflects that now at least there are fewer opportunities left in life to get things wrong. But the tranquillity he anticipated is not to be. In fact, as Thanksgiving dinner with his children and first wife nears, the Permanent Period proves as full of possibility as life had ever been. In his third Frank Bascombe novel Richard Ford contemplates the human character with wry precision. Graceful, expansive, filled with pathos but irresistibly funny, The Lay of the Land is a modern American masterpiece.
'Wistful, bittersweet - and often very funny ... seems to locate all the quiet despairs and hopes of the human condition with exquisite precision'
'Sublime ... a richly textured, rolling and poetic voice'
'Engaging, brilliant, hugely sad and, of course, ultimately uplifting. As with the other two, I'll read it again and again'
'A massive, ruminative, poignant and cathartic novel ... it is a masterly account of a modulating adult life. Ford's canvas is huge, but his wealth of subtle detail remains astonishingly vivid'
The new masterpiece from one of America's greatest novelists
