I have just spent the last six weeks or more, including a large chunk of time when I had no family at home, reading The Lay of the Land the new novel by Richard Ford. So far I am only 214 pages in and the book is 485 pages long. One thing is pretty clear; I am not the dovegreyreader of Upper Norwood. Not by a long country mile.
(The same dovegreyreader, incidentally, who wishes me visited by men in stripy shirts called Stallion - the shirts not the men. The men are more likely to be called Henry and Tristan and possibly Jeremy - for I fear she thinks I might explode and, that, that will be funny.The sauce! How nice is that - community nurse indeed.
She is forgiven however because she lives in Devon and must be literally surrounded by those self same men. I think I read somewhere that she has a gun. Probably very wise. That said, I am on my guard for the merest hint of a stripe although all will be well so long as they remember the manners their nannies once taught them).
Anyway, I figured that if it had taken Mr Ford 11 years to write The Lay of the Land I might be equally generous with my time. Well maybe not equally; 11 years would be an awfully long time to read a novel, but lets just say I wasn't going to rush it, for, in common with the two novels that precede it in this (so far) trilogy of books featuring Frank Bascombe, The Sportswriter and Independence Day, it is not a novel to be rushed.
What is more, since The Sportswriter was first published in 1985 (my copy is inscribed; with the distinct pleasure of laying eyes on you again), and Independence Day in 1995(by which time, though still inscribed, Mr Ford had managed to forget ever laying eyes on me at all- no big deal), it is fair to say that I do feel as though I have been reading the the story of Frank for a large part of my adult life. And whilst Frank is a few years older than me he still feels like my contemporary, which is an attraction, but also alarming, in that, without looking, I didn't realise that I had got so old.
Oh, and by the bye, I may yet still explode. I am expecting seven boxes today including five copies of The Lay of the Land. I have just checked on-line. Four of the boxes have reached Vauxhall but are unlikely to make it up the hill until tomorrow. Two more of the boxes are still in Norwich, leaving just the singular to darken my door.