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Be Mine

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Be Mine

By: Richard Ford
Narrated by: Richard Poe
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About this listen

Bloomsbury presents Be Mine by Richard Ford, read by Richard Poe.

Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is, here, once more our guide to the great American midway.

Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives — sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent — Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter's odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank in typical Bascombe fashion faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days.

In this memorable novel, Richard Ford puts on display the prose, wit and intelligence that make him one of the world's most acclaimed living writers. Be Mine is a profound, funny, poignant love letter to our beleaguered world.

‘One of the finest achievements of modern American fiction’ The Independent

©2023 Richard Ford (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage Funny
All stars
Most relevant  
I have followed the lives of the Bascombes as much as Frank will share. That’s a lot. Humbling and real, yet almost everything about his life and his attitudes are strange.
Gender, culture, politics, all of it is alien to me. Yet I have come to be a grateful onlooker. Essential wisdom is interspersed amongst the very dry, acerbic humour. Teary thanks.

A perfect tale.

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I don’t think I’ve cried and laughed so such in equal amounts before listening to this novel. The narrator just gets it and the writing makes you want to go back thirty seconds over and over just to hear the author’s perfectly crafted lines. Ford observes and relates the universality of life’s difficulties without his characters surrendering to them. He kicks kicks back at Heidegger’s convoluted pessimism and shows us the beauty in the everyday without surrendering either to cliche. Life, despite our current political turmoil - however brief for some - is good if we’d only just allow ourselves to stop and see. The lines are so beautifully crafted and delivered with such empathy. So good, I’ve got to now go and buy the actual physical book.

Understated Genius at (W)ork

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.