Richard Ford's Independence Day is not the sort of book I usually read. Books that feature first person narratives by middle aged men don't usually grab me.
That said, this book (which I began reading on July 4, in a poetic moment) managed to capture the mundane in a really dynamic way, and I do love the realistic. Plus, it's a novel of the Northeast, and I enjoyed reading about such a familiar setting. There are things I would change (there are a few slow sections, for example) and I'm not going to claim to have liked the narrator all the time. He's a flawed dude, and sometimes as a reader, I wanted to shake him or perhaps even kick him in the shins. However, I can't imagine a middle aged, male, realtor in New Jersey that I could ever meet that I wouldn't want to kick in the shins at some point. Ford also has a way with words that can be quite striking, and at the oddest points.
Finally, this is a book about Frank (the narrator). It's not about anyone else, and it's important not to read it hoping for more than that, because that's not what the book aims to do. I can't say that all of the supporting characters are well-developed, but that is not really the point, and once I adjusted to that, the book became more enjoyable.
Posted by waking slow at July 19, 2005 02:27 PM