Farewell Frank Bascombe. It’s been good knowing you. At least I assume it’s goodbye. Frank is now 74, semi-retired, and having to face perhaps his biggest challenge yet – caring for his unpleasant forty-seven-year-old son Paul who has just been diagnosed with ALS. Frank plans to take Paul on one last road trip. Richard Ford is, as ever, an acute and insightful observer of America and Americans, and I found the book (mostly) a joy to read, in spite of its themes and preoccupations, the seriousness of Paul’s illness and Frank’s own waning powers. Only one episode jarred somewhat – Frank’s relationship with a Vietnamese-American masseuse, which was essentially unconvincing and vaguely distasteful – although never disrespectful to her. It’s a book about ageing, illness, death, failed relationships – so not a cheerful read - but it’s all narrated with Frank’s trademark verve and wit, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I don't think this is the best book to start reading Richard Ford's novels but this was my first one and was a sort of novice.
I got more than i bargained as I discovered a talented storyteller and read a novel that moved me to tears and made me laugh.
It's a novel about life, mortality and there's something that kept me turning pages.
I want to read the other books as I want to learn more about Bascombe.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Committed Fordites could not help but feel faintly disappointed by Let Me Be Frank With You, from the weak-punning title onwards. This 2014 series of novellas seemedl a under-powered after the head of steambuilt up by the previous three volumes chronicling Frank Bascombe’s life and times. Now ten years on the novel that we wished for after Lay of the Land has arrived. Frank is now 74 and the caregiver to his adult son Paul, the co-star of the second of the sequence, Independence Day. Paul is dying of motor neurone disease and Frank has planned a Bucket List trip to Mount Rushmore, the kind of Big Metaphor Road Trip that powered Independence Day.

The delights of Ford/Frank (for author and character are virtually one by now) are on full view here: the endless everyday items and obligations that must be attended to or retold before the journey can even begin. The delight in the modest pleasures of life, from a night at a Hllton and petrol stations to sports on television and political bumper stickers; and of course small talk with strangers. If Independence Day explicitly used the dialogues between Paul and Frank to ask what America was, here their conversations centre around whether we can every be happy. When enforced happiness is the social norm, how do we know when we are really happy? The sequences at the Mayo clinic where Paul is a star patient - sorry, co-investigator - into his own disease -see Ford gently rip into the compulsory happiness in American culture that Barbera Ehrenreich terms ‘Brightsiding’. Their rejection of this corporate culture in favour of something more personal and home-made is the novel’s pivot moment.

Outside of the air-conditioned lobbies of the Mayo clinic Ford is always great on weather - the heat of Independence Day, the fast-changing Atlantic shore climate of Lay of the Land - and here it’s the frozen snows of Minnesota and Montana that set the tone as Paul and Frank pilot a ramshackle RV across the mid-West to Rushmore. It’s weather that only intensifies the struggles that Frank has to involve Paul in his unlikely odyssey.

Be Mine delves into some of the ‘difficult conversations’ - how do we talk with someone with only months to life. How should we spend the time we have left with them? Through all the humiliations, slips and falls Frank’s trademark laconic and distant voice is very much intact, dealing out those trademark one-line musings. The languid, diffident and questioning style is always a joy to read, slipping effortlessly from the present day to remembered fishing trips or journeys with ex-wifes ashes. For anyone else you’d say that Frank in his seventies, like most of us, has become more wrapped up in debating his own past , but Frank was ever thus.

Should anyone new to Ford start here? No, of course not. The accumulation of shared history, of Bascombe lore, means it makes as much sense to start here as with series six of The Sopranos. I mean you could, but you’re missing 90% of the good stuff. Is it a fitting end to the life and times of Frank Bascombe, absolutely.

The latest and maybe last in the wonderful Frank Bascombe series and I still remember who awe struck I was by "The Sportswriter" when I read it so many years ago.

Anything written by this author will be immaculately written and impeccably plotted, and this is no exception.

Frank is now looking after his son who unfortunately suffers from ALS and takes him on a memorable road trip.

Funny, poignant and sad, this is an entertaining but sometimes tough read. exploring difficult subjects but with a lightness of touch and is well worth persevering with.

Be Mine by Richard Ford is apparently the fifth and last in the series of Frank Bascombe novels. Frank is now in his 70's and is looking after his 47 year old son Paul who has A.L.S., a motor neurone disease. They decide to take a road trip to Mount Rushmore in a rented Dodge RV and the book tells the story of this adventure. Although this sounds like a somewhat depressing subject for a book Ford's sense of humour and perceptive views on life and mortality lift the novel to make it an entertaining and enjoyable read.

Frank Bascombe is back. His surviving son has ALS and Frank cares for him.

As with all Bascombe books there is travel at a holiday time. This time it is Valentine’s Day and they travel to Mount Rushmore.

Richard Ford is so good at capturing everyday life in the US. As with the other books in the series there are amusing an insightful observations. Not surprisingly, however, the overarching theme for me was grief and melancholy.

Thanks to Netgallery for the ARC.

A road trip novel between a father and son. The son has motor neuron disease and has been enrolled in a medical study - having ‘graduated’ from the study they decide to go to Mount Rushmore.
There were some gems in this book - the thoughts on what is happiness, their analysis of their relationship, and their views on death, is it an abrupt light switch or a slower dimmer switch.?
It is a meandering tale, not much happens and as such is perhaps a little long - hence 4 rather than 5 stars.

Frank Bascombe is back in what is likely to be the last of the novels he narratives and it's good to hear his voice again. The consistency and vividness of this voice is really the achievement of this series and it obviously has the same sort of appeal for Richard Ford, who keeps coming back to it. Be Mine is largely a road novel, as Frank takes his son, Paul, whose health is rapidly deteriorating due to ALS, to see Mount Rushmore in early 2020. Lots and little happen along the way, as the father and son spar uneasily and accommodate themselves to each other. There is wisdom here and experience and reflections on the pandemic and its effects, although it is never named. Late in the novel, a hotel owner tells Frank: "We don’t always have to do the precise right thing for the precise right reasons all the time. Okay, Frank?”. Towards its end, Frank says "I am happy to have done one seemingly right thing for one seemingly not wrong reason". It seems like a suitable note, as banal as it is insightful, on which to conclude a remarkable series of books. Although I for one would appreciate more...

Such a pleasure to be reunited with the character of Frank Bascombe once again in Richard Ford's latest novel Be Mine. Exploring themes as deep as mortality and loss and resilience and what it means to be happy but with a light touch.