At about half the length of the previous Frank Bascombe novel, Let Me Be Frank With You is an easy read. It consists of four stories, and there is some overlap between them, so each is standalone.  While in Lay of the Land, the sentences were long and the reading was hard work, this has plenty of dialog and the sentences are shorter. It would be hard to appreciate the book without having read one or two of the previous books in the series, since so much of Frank’s narrative depends on having some sense of his past.  He is now in his sixties, has retired, and says he is waiting to die, although he keeps himself busy. The story is very specifically located in New Jersey just after Hurricane Sandy. Frank is married again, but we don’t get to see his wife much.  He is on his own, or interacting with a former client who is complaining about losing his house, with a visitor who used to live in his house, with his ex-wife, and with a man who he used to know, a neighbor who was not quite a friend. Frank doesn’t get into the same sorts of arguments that he used to, and he treats other people with civility, but he doesn’t relish these conversations.  He wants to cut them short, but does not know how.   Indeed, he forever seems to be in situations that he finds ridiculous, but he keeps on, without escaping from his predicament.  He also contemplates how his life has changed now that he is older and more frail; he is preoccupied by the dangers of falling down and breaking a hip.  He voted for Obama but most of his friends complain about the President.  He is worried about how to be appropriately patriotic, appropriately supportive, appropriately compassionate, without being false. He occasionally refers to poetry as part of his way of making sense of the world, or giving other people comfort.  

Although Frank is sometimes evasive and glib, he is mostly wry and he feels a lot about the pain that others suffer.  He has gone through a lot himself, having lost a wife and a child. He hears other people’s suffering too, and he understands the difficulty and absurdity of life.  He is more likable here, both fallible and sensitive, but also very funny.

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York