{"product_id":"the-lay-of-the-land-by-richard-ford","title":"The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford (Frank Bascombe #3)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate), more acutely in thrall to life’s endless complexities than ever before. A holiday, and a novel, no reader will ever forget—at once hilarious, harrowing, surprising, and profound.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWith The Sportswriter, in 1986, Richard Ford commenced a cycle of novels that ten years later—after Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN\/Faulkner Award—was hailed by The Times of London as “an extraordinary epic [that] is nothing less than the story of the twentieth century itself.” Now, a decade later, Frank Bascombe returns, with a new lease on life (and real estate), more acutely in thrall to life’s endless complexities than ever before.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHis story resumes in the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving, permitting him to revel in the acceptance of “that long, stretching-out time when my dreams would have mystery like any ordinary person’s; when whatever I do or say, who I marry, how my kids turn out, becomes what the world—if it makes note at all—knows of me, how I’m seen, understood, even how I think of myself before whatever there is that’s wild and unassuagable rises and cheerlessly hauls me off to oblivion.” But as a Presidential election hangs in the balance, and a postnuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him along with crises both marital and medical, Frank discovers that what he terms the Permanent Period is fraught with unforeseen perils: “All the ways that life feels like life at age fifty-five were strewn around me like poppies.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA holiday, and a novel, no reader will ever forget—at once hilarious, harrowing, surprising, and profound. The Lay of the Land is astonishing in its own right and a magnificent expansion of one of the most celebrated chronicles of our time.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Stirring Pages","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":65510409273693,"sku":null,"price":4.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1077\/7827\/7725\/files\/4114563482454.jpg?v=1786093771","url":"https:\/\/stirringpages.com\/products\/the-lay-of-the-land-by-richard-ford","provider":"Stirring Pages","version":"1.0","type":"link"}