Be Mine

‘Wounding and hilarious … The quality of Ford’s prose leaves the reader breathless; there are sentences and paragraphs here you could read and re-read without ever tiring of doing so’

Business Post

‘The laureate of the American middle-class middle man … Great’

Telegraph

‘Few writers have captured contemporary American life as incisively as Richard Ford … Bascombe is a memorable literary creation – one of the most complicated and unique characters of our age – and these first-person novels, so resonant in setting and so strong in plot, are full of pathos, as well as being nuanced, wickedly funny depictions of contemporary American life'

Independent

'Ford’s world is contingent, frightening, beautiful, comically manifold'

Guardian

'Frank is heroic in his own quotidian way. He holds himself together the way you and I hold ourselves together (or try to): by snatching at straws in the maelstrom of everyday life. That’s the power of the Bascombe novels. Ford creates a reading experience that feels truer than your own experience … Think of Be Mine as a chance to spend a last few hours with a friend'

The Times

‘Ford is a master of first-person narratives in which there is space for philosophical reflection as well as telling human detail’

Mail on Sunday

‘Comic elegy … A picaresque record of American boomerdom … Wonderful’

Novel of the Month, The Oldie

Praise for Richard Ford:

'A masterful writer'

Raymond Carver

'Ford writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight'

Observer

'A marvellous writer'

John Banville

'I can't think of many other writers, living or dead, who have given me so many reasons over the years to slow down on the page and pay attention'

Times Literary Supplement

'An American master'

Daily Telegraph