Beth Bonini's Reviews > Independence Day

In a better world, Paul would've snagged a line drive bare-handed off the bat of one of the ersatz A's, gone trooping off to the Hall of Fame with a proud, satisfyingly swollen mitt, had a satisfactory but not overly good time nosing around through Babe Ruth's locker, taking in the Johnny Bench 'out at second' video and hearing canned crowd noises from the Thirties. Later we could've walked out into the shimmery sunshine of Sunday, caught-ball in hand, gone for a Gay Nineties malt, found some aspirin, had our caricatures drawn together wearing vintage baseball suits, had some well-earned laughs, played Frisbee, set off my bottle rockets along a deserted inlet of the lake and ended the day early, lying in the grass under a surviving elm, with me explaining the ultimate value of good manners and that a common sense commitment to progress (while only a Christian fiction) can still be a good, pragmatic overlay onto a life that could get dicey and long.

There is a very specific rhythm to the narrative of this book and it requires full immersion for full appreciation. It's a book that devotes itself to the relentless inner dialogue of Frank Banscombe: divorced father of two, sportswriter turned realtor. I'm not sure where the book is meant to take us - is it just a coincidence that Frank spends so much time bogged down in traffic, or keeps having to reroute his journeys? There is something undeniably compelling about the narrative, though, and I definitely felt like the voice of Frank lodged itself inside my head.

Throughout the book, Frank makes reference to the fact that he is living in his 'Existence' period. I inferred that to mean that Frank feels some degree of emotional detachment - not just from his life, but from the relationships in his life. I'm not sure if that's just a lie that Frank tells himself, though. After 451 pages of being directly exposed to Frank's mental processes, so alive to detail and nuance of personality, so prone to sharing ten details when one or two would do, I'm not sure I would describe him as detached. Instead, he seems absolutely awash in awareness - not to mention analysis.

Frank lives in Haddam, New Jersey, in his former wife's house, and he is the owner of two other small rental houses and a root-beer stand. In the course of the book, he will attempt to find the right property for a difficult couple called the Markhams. Details about houses - the way they are constructed, the styles of them, the market value of them - are a constant theme in the book, although the emotional significance of them is not lost on Frank, either. His ex-wife's new husband is an architect: psychoanalyse that, if you will. In fact, I never was sure how much of this book was meant to be read symbolically or metaphorically. It feels dense with meaning at times, and not just because of its penchant for elaborately detailed sentences.

There are three women in Frank's life and all of the relationships are unresolved in some way. The first relationship is with Ann, his former wife; although they have been divorced for a number of years, it's clear that Frank is still attached to her in a variety of ways, and not just because of the children (two living and one dead) which they share. Then there is his girlfriend Sally, who he is considering committing to on some level. Finally, there is his former girlfriend and fellow co-worker Clair Devane - whose unsolved murder is a mystery both in the town of Haddam and in this book.

What does it all mean or add up to? I was never entirely sure. At times, I was beguiled by the writing and at other times I was maddened by it. Is it meant to be just a 3 day 'slice' in the life of a middle-aged, middle-class American man? Is Frank's life meant to be read as a parallel story of the United States, as the title implies? Is this story an identity crisis or an endurance test? A comedy or a tragedy?

Suffice it to say, Frank Banscombe's visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame with his teenage son Paul - meant to be an opportunity for father-son bonding, and a wholesomely American one at that - does not play out in quite the 'ideal' way imagined in the paragraph I quote from. (By the way, that quotation should give you a good sense of the writing style.) Instead, the two end up in the hospital because Paul has deliberately put himself in the direct trajectory of a ball machine - although it is probable that, although he had the intention to hurt himself (or at least his father), he was still surprised by the result.

That might seem like an apt metaphor for Frank Banscombe's life, although his loquacious first-person narrative doesn't explicitly say so. Ford lays out Frank's life for us as a richly textured glorious mess of tapestry, and then he lets the reader judge for him or herself.

3.75 stars
For at least half the time, I struggled to read this book. And yet, after finishing it, I found myself wanting to read its prequel The Sportswriter. Go figure