31st March 2026
In Richard Ford’s novel, Frank Bascombe is a sportswriter approaching his 39th birthday and living in the fictional town of Haddam, New Jersey. Having had an amicable divorce from his wife – whom we only ever know as “X” – he is attempting to establish a relationship with a nurse, Vicki Arcenault, herself a 30-year old divorcée. His two young children live with his ex-wife, though he has regular contact with them. The book’s opening chapter describes the annual early-morning ritual – this one on Good Friday 1984 – of Frank and X meeting at the grave of their other son, Ralph.
We learn something of Frank’s life to date – his college days at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, early success as a short-story writer, a discarded attempt at a novel, an unhappy teaching assignment in New Hampshire, a promiscuous private life – but the core of the narrative takes place over that Easter weekend. The events of those days are set against a continual presentation of Frank’s reflections on life and what it does or doesn’t offer.
Although he is clearly haunted by Ralph’s early death from the rare Reye’s Syndrome, Frank is generally content with his lot. He is also something of an optimist – or at least until the “dreaminess” of his usual state is confronted with the “facts”: “I am always hopeful for a great surprise to open in what has always been a possible place for it… Only when the facts are made clear, I can’t bear it and run away as fast as I can – to Vicki or writing a good sports story or to some woman in a far-off city whom I know I’ll never see again”.
The reader might be frustrated when these periods of reflection and soul-searching cause the pace of the story to slow down. More specifically, there are also disquieting passages describing a couple of Frank’s unspoken reflections – his speculations on the anatomy and hypothetical background of the black Seminary priest to whom he rents a room in his house – the shock of which jumps off the page.
Frank explains his drift into sportswriting to a young girl he meets at a highway service station: “I went to college. Then, when I got older, I failed at everything else and that’s all I could do”. Later, he acknowledges the benefits he gets from reaching a large readership, though he also has no illusions about the reality of his chosen profession: “Writers – all writers – need to belong. Only for real writers, unfortunately, their club is a club with just one member”.
It might be noted that, during the course of the book, Frank doesn’t actually do any sportswriting, though he does conduct one background interview. For this, he takes a trip to Detroit – with Vicki – to interview a former American football player, Herb Wallagher, who is now in a wheelchair following a boating accident.
The engagement does not go well – Herb is by turns confrontational, aggressive and self-pitying – and it takes some resolve for Frank, during his return cab-ride back to Vicki at their downtown hotel, to turn down his driver’s suggestion of being fixed up with a “hundred-dollar whore”. The following evening, when Frank returns to the office and attempts to compose his article, he is immediately distracted by the overtures of one of the new interns.
The weekend break is also less than successful in other regards. Vicki catches Frank rifling through her handbag, in which he has located a photograph of what he assumes (incorrectly) to be her ex-husband. There is an echo here of Frank’s final break-up with X, in which she had come across a stash of (entirely innocent) letters to him from a female admirer.
We get a good sense of time and place. Frank likes living in his hometown, certainly in comparison with the alternative offered by “Gotham” – New York, of course – fifty miles away. There are nice descriptions of topography and architecture and some detailed representations of the local and regional accents to which he is – or has been – exposed. (X is from Michigan, Vicki from Texas). Frank’s television viewing is centred around “watching Johnny” (without the need to give Carson’s surname).
The author is also adept with dialogue. This is evident in some of the conversations between Frank and Vicki – often when Frank is attempting to grasp the real meaning of what she is saying – as it was in Frank’s uncomfortable interview with Herb. Frank also has a couple of awkward interactions with Walter Luckett – a fellow member of their local Divorced Men’s Club – prompted by an agonising personal confession by Walter of something he had recently done.
It is such conversations that help to drive the story along. They also encourage the reader to speculate on what the possible turns of events might be for Frank and/or those around him. I have to report, incidentally, that when one particularly dramatic – and tragic – event does occur, it was not a total surprise to me.
Interestingly, although the novel is set in the (contemporary) early 1980s, some of the characters’ personal views could also have featured had it been published today. One of Frank’s octogenarian neighbours – Delia Deffeyes – is adamant about what she and her husband think the US Government should do to address the country’s current ills: “Casper and I think that the States should build a wall all along the Mexican frontier, as large as the Great Wall, and man it with armed men, and make it clear to those countries, that we have problems of our own in here”. This is over 30 years before Donald Trump first runs for President.
JR Alexander 