Review by Booklist Review
Ford introduced protagonist Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter (1986). He reappeared in Independence Day, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996. It was followed by The Lay of the Land (2006) and Let Me Be Frank with You (2014). Here Frank is a septuagenarian, and his son, Paul, 47, is undergoing experimental therapy for ALS at the Mayo Clinic. Frank has relocated from New Jersey, renting a nearby house so he can help. Paul's days are numbered, a fate he accepts with equal parts rueful resignation and bitter black humor. Their father-son relationship is alternately antagonistic and tentatively tender. Once the therapy is complete, Frank and Paul embark on a road trip to Mount Rushmore on Valentine's Day. Ford masterfully captures the strained dynamic of two men attempting to articulate emotions. Frank has a rich interiority that he struggles to manifest externally, while Paul is a master of non sequiturs, bad puns, and pithy insults. Ford's prose attains a rare combination of exquisite beauty powered by dialogue that has the casual familiarity of a jocular Everyman gifted with a winning, sly wit. Be Mine ultimately charts the journey of the human condition and the strivings, failings, and resiliency of the human heart. A fitting finale to the landmark Bascombe saga, this ranks among Ford's best.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Readers will pursue the conclusion to Ford's celebrated run of novels about his iconic character Frank Bascombe.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ford finds Frank Bascombe, star of The Sportswriter, still searching for the meaning of life in his appealing latest. Frank, 74 and twice divorced, stays buoyant despite some mortal despair by indulging in clichés such as falling for a younger massage therapist. His son, Paul, has ALS, and he proposes they road-trip together to Mount Rushmore. In a rented RV, Frank and Paul set out from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where Paul has just finished participating in a clinical study. On the way through South Dakota, they stop at the famed Corn Palace, spend a night at a rundown motel, and visit a dire casino called the Fawning Buffalo. "What causes places to be awful is always of interest," Frank notes in Rapid City. Father and son banter with mock cruelty, but Frank's outlook is sincere: "Not every story ends happy. Out in the gloom you can find some lights on." These pages are steeped in melancholy, and for the most part Ford's prose stays within the speed limit, neither soaring nor stalling, though he stops the reader cold with the occasional startling insight: Paul, divulging the details of his dementia, remarks on Frank's indomitable mind: "You connect everything." Ford's fans will find much to love. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Frank Bascombe receives the send-off he deserves in this fifth book of the series, following Let Me Be Frank With You (2014). Death is very much on the mind of the 74-year-old narrator of this curtain call of a novel. But not primarily his own. His one surviving son, Paul, has contracted ALS (or "Al's," as they personify it), and Frank is shepherding him through what both know will be his final days--first at the Mayo Clinic in wintry, frigid Rochester, Minnesota, and then on a pilgrimage to Mount Rushmore. It's a trip that both men find senseless and absurd, but you have to fill a life somehow, even if it's about to end. Paul has neither forgotten nor forgiven his parents' split, their marriage doomed after the death of his brother. Now Paul's mother (Frank's first ex-wife) is dead as well. Frank seems adrift, but then he always has. He's a reflective man but not a particularly deep thinker, more reactive to the vagaries of life than purposeful at determining any particular goal, direction, or meaning. But death--his first wife's, his son's, and eventually his own--gives him a lot to ponder about the meaning of it all, if there is any, and causes him to reflect on the life he has lived through the previous novels. One needn't have read those to appreciate this, but it could well inspire readers to revisit the entire fictional cycle, launched to great acclaim with The Sportswriter (1986). As its title alludes, the new novel focuses on Valentine's Day, as much as Independence Day (1995) did on that holiday: It's a novel about the ambiguities of love and happiness. Frank remains a funny guy, both ha-ha funny and a little odd, but Ford couldn't be more serious about his craft, his precision, his attention to detail, his need to say exactly what he means. If this is also Ford's curtain call, he has done himself proud. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
