Let Me Be Frank With You
Richard Ford
[Bloomsbury]
‘Character, to me, is one more lie of history and the dramatic arts,’ declares Frank Bascombe in the third of four linked novellas that comprise Let Me Be Frank With You. This dramatic lie of character holds together Richard Ford’s fourth Frank Bascombe book: Ford’s ex-sportswriter/ex-realtor/ex-husband persona has been tempered but not fundamentally altered by age, with Frank’s droll commentary and maddening complacency stubbornly persisting through retired life. Indeed, the novellas seem intended as stagy set-pieces for Frank; finely written and meticulous miniature dramas built to showcase his observations and reactions as he merrily mansplains away his thoughts on gender, race and age. If this sounds awful, it sometimes is. Low points include Frank’s odd conclusions on transgender identity, his recasting of a black hospice carer as an old Southern mammy, and pronouncements on age and accidents reminiscent of sub-par stand-up: ‘What is it about falling?’ he asks.
Frank’s world seems small, and its stakes mean: life, he decides, is ‘a matter of gradual subtraction’ towards a ‘more nearly perfect essence’. Yet these novellas gain their power – and there is power – when the past, the public and the uncomfortable intrude on Frank’s intended story. Social concerns barge in more insistently than in previous Bascombe works, and rubbing up against others’ brutal family histories, the destruction of Hurricane Sandy and death’s bodily horrors expands the reach of these fictions – and of Frank’s character. An uneven, uneasy and still compelling book.
Words: Gill Moore
